Happy Britons defy economic gloom

A national study of well-being has shown that 76 per cent of people rated their satisfaction in life as seven out of 10 or more.

Women and pensioners are among the happiest people in Britain, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show, despite the current economic woes.

Women trumped men in the happiness stakes, scoring an average of 7.8 compared with 7.5, in spite of Labour’s claim on Thursday that government’s cuts have amounted to “the biggest attack on women in a generation“.

The experimental poll of 4,200 adults carried out by the ONS was commissioned by David Cameron who argued in 2006 that it was “time we admitted there’s more to life than money, and it’s time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB – general well-being”.

Indeed, since 1970 the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) has doubled, but people’s satisfaction with life has hardly changed, according to the New Economics Foundation.

The NEF adds: “Well-being is one of the most important aspects of our lives, as individuals and as societies. But despite the unprecedented economic prosperity in the last 35 years we do not necessarily feel better individually or as communities”.

The ONS polling was carried out before this week’s grim economic news took hold of the headlines, reporting findings from continuous polling between April and August – apart from May.

The summer months were however, not exempt from economic warnings, and it is surprising to note that unemployed people polled were only slightly less happy than their employed counterparts. Unemployed respondents scored an average of 6.8 for “happy yesterday”, compared to employed respondents that scored 7.5.

Overall, satisfaction with personal relationships and mental wellness had the highest mean scores at 8.3 out of 10. For people with children, the highest average was for satisfaction with their child or children’s well-being, at 8.7.

Stephen Hicks, ONS project leader for measuring subjective well-being, said: “These are early experimental results from our opinions survey but nevertheless they give us an indication of the well-being levels within Great Britain in this case.”

The news follows an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report in October that ranked the United Kingdom among the top countries in several topics in its “Better Life Index”.

The OECD flagged up its finding that 67 per cent of mothers in the UK are employed after their children begin school, suggesting that women are able to successfully balance family and career.

People in the UK work an average 1,646 hours a year, less than in other OECD countries.

Overall, the OECD’s findings came close to the ONS’s, reporting that 68 per cent of people in the UK said they were satisfied with life, above the OECD average of 59 per cent.

The initial findings come as the ONS prepares to publish a larger survey of 200,000 people next year who will have been asked the same questions.