Of all the policies associated with David Cameron, one of the most meaningless and dangerous has gone largely ignored. If ever there was the modern equivalent of a Cones Hotline, Citizens Charter and Millennium Dome all wrapped up in a single package, the Happiness Index is it. Most people probably regard it as inevitable that governments spend taxpayers’ money on a certain number of useless measures and hope no harm will come because of them. But this particular measure, at a cost of £2m per year, could provide the green light for all manner of rotten initiatives under the excuse that ‘this is for your own good’.

David Cameron has long been interested in ‘happiness’ as a driver of public policy. Back in 2005, as opposition education spokesman, Cameron spoke of happiness as the “fourth dimension” in education policy-making, on top of the more traditional benefits education delivers, like social mobility, social cohesion and economic competitiveness. This, presumably, explains why academics are such happy souls.

The Conservatives liked talking about ‘general wellbeing’ back in the early days of Cameron’s leadership when he was trying to detoxify the Tory brand. Then, last autumn, somewhat out of the blue, the prime minister announced the launch of the first official Happiness Index, due for publication in April 2012.

Why is a happiness measure meaningless? First, it is not linked to factors that the government can do much about. In designing the ITV News Cuts Index, we wanted to explore how the economic slowdown and spending cuts would affect the way people felt about their lives. As the chart at the bottom of the page shows, as the country plunged into economic depression, people’s happiness levels changed barely a jot.

So, while we can measure variables such as economic optimism, there is no obvious short-term link between those measures and how happy people feel. Although there do appear to be consistent linkages between reported happiness and other key measures, it is unclear whether these are coincidental or causative. It is also doubtful that government can, or would, wish to do anything concrete to promote some of those linked variables.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


There are numerous examples of conclusions drawn about human happiness where policy implications would be stupid, dangerous or politically impossible. For example, a 2002 University of Pennsylvania study concluded that materialism is “toxic” for happiness. Yet the prevailing assumption behind Cameron’s project is that happiness and wealth are somehow linked. What will happen if the government’s own study findings contradict that assumption? Will the government start encouraging us to hug each other more and trade less?

Academic studies consistently make links between happiness and variables like being married and religious belief. While government policy can create a benign environment that encourages marriage or allows religious belief to flourish, ultimately it cannot stand, Canute-like, in the way of social change. Where governments try to stamp on religious belief or force people into particular family structures, they almost always fail. As the Chinese government is discovering, the best way to ensure a flourishing underground church is to persecute it.

Other policy conclusions could be more sinister. Studies into happiness often show either no link, or a negative one, with having children. Others show a positive link with rather random activities like Scottish country dancing. None merits or deserves government intervention, thank you very much.

Rather ambitiously, the government has suggested that its National Wellbeing project will help people as they make decisions like where to live. A Downing Street source said at its launch: “If you want to know, ‘Should I live in Exeter rather than London?’ ‘What will it do to my quality of life?’ you need a large enough sample size. If you have a big sample, and have more than one a year, then people can make proper analysis on what to do with their life.”

Yet who, in reality, makes their location decision based on such statistics? Perhaps such people will also take into account another recent study, which found that people who live in the places considered happiest are more likely to take their own lives!

It was feared that the Happiness Index would simply highlight a nation’s misery in the wake of the economic recession. That is unlikely, but far more disturbing is that it could fulfil the prime minister’s ambition of becoming a policy tool, that governments would justify a course of legislative action on the basis that their algorithm tells them that we will all be happier as a result.

Encouragingly, the Office for National Statistics website ‘Measuring National Well-Being’ suggests that the most likely outcome will be more anodyne. It lists priceless suggestions from the public, such as happiness is “having friends that never say ‘I told you so’ but give you a hug, crack open a bottle of wine and make you smile again”. Do we really need to spend £2m of public money to tell us that?

Andrew Hawkins is chairman of ComRes

Tags: Happiness Index, Wellbeing