Something is going wrong for young people between the ages of 15 and 24 in the UK, across Europe, the US and Australia.
The latest World Happiness Report shows that while not all teenagers and young adults are suffering, a large and growing number cannot cope with being left adrift with few qualifications on an economic sea that is more testing with each passing year.
Social media is believed to play a part in driving down self-esteem and robbing young people of their wellbeing. But it is the lack of education, skills training and affordable housing that underpins the decline in the positive outlook traditionally displayed in surveys by those broadly fitting the gen Z age group.
The report found that young people are becoming more like their beleaguered parents, who have always reported themselves to be exhausted and weighed down by life’s cares, and not like older people, who still score highly on the happiness index.
University is less of a guarantee of financial and psychological wellbeing, and those that do not go into higher education are left to fend for themselves with only limited access to apprenticeships and further education courses that might lift their social standing, income and self-respect.
As the Intergenerational Foundation charity said in response to the report: “Young adults are being hit from all sides by a toxic combination of government policy, a housing affordability crisis, stagnating wages, and a high cost of living.
“No wonder their generation is experiencing unprecedented levels of mental ill-health as their futures look so bleak.”
If young people are increasingly reporting themselves to be unhappy, closing the gap between the young and the middle-aged, it leaves only the older generations to report the highest levels of life satisfaction. And no wonder when spiralling stock markets and a global property boom have given the over-55s a level of wealth unknown in human history.
Wealth brings with it a sense of wellbeing, and so do higher incomes, which have also improved for most people nearing retirement or already collecting their pension. State-sponsored retirement schemes have been largely protected from the ravages of inflation, meaning that average poverty levels have declined among the over-65s.
In the UK it is noticeable that the state pension has escaped means-testing, which has become a fixture for in-work benefits, denying many young people with incomes just above the poverty line a lifeline of state support.
Where the young and old previously had a positive outlook and those middle-aged less so, this has been flattening out with time. The situation was more exaggerated in Britain, which dropped from 19th to the 20th happiest country overall, but was ranked 32nd when only the views of people under 30 were taken into account.
Richard Layard, a professor at the London School of Economics and one of the report’s authors, is clear that the findings show more effort is needed to support the education, training and mental health of younger people. Even if young people are only considered to be economic units of production, the evidence shows the whole economy benefits from them have a better sense of wellbeing.
Another study by Layard for the LSE and the Resolution Foundation 2030 Inquiry found that the UK was the only country among the 38 members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development where the literacy and numeracy of 16- to 24-year-olds is no higher that that of 55- to 65-year-olds. And almost a third of people aged 18 in the UK are not in education or training, about double the average in France and Germany.
It showed that not much had changed since 2007 when Unicef published a table of 21 economically advanced countries, comparing 40 indicators – including poverty, family relationships, health and safety, education and children’s own sense of happiness – that might affect the wellbeing of children.
At the bottom of the Unicef study, in 21st place, was the UK, just below the US. As with the World Happiness Report, the Nordic countries filled the top places.
Unicef concluded that children growing up in the UK were the unhappiest in the industrialised world, and blamed the lack of collaboration and cooperation with other children at school and parents who spent little time “just talking” to them. That was 17 years ago.
The latest World Happiness Report is a warning sign to governments that have put the welfare of older people above that of younger generations. If young people cannot establish themselves in the workplace with a decent home and time and money to visit friends and family, the ramifications will boomerang on the old. There will be slower economic growth and fewer funds to support the retired.
• This article was amended on 22 March 2024. An earlier version said that Britain was ranked 30th when only the views of people under 30 were taken into account. This should have said 32nd.
