We're still measuring David Cameron's Domestic Happiness Index, and it isn't looking good at all

General concern about 'wellbeing' – boredom, anxiety, stress – comes top – but specific fear about health actually ranks below the effects on work, household finances and schooling, writes Sean O'Grady

David Cameron received lifelong protection from specialist police officers (Getty Images)

It seemed a good idea at the time. Almost a decade ago, a freshly minted Tory prime minister announced that he wanted to introduce an index of Gross Domestic Happiness. As David Cameron put it at the time, “We will start measuring our progress as a country not just by how our economy is doing, but by how our lives are improving; not just by our standard of living, but by our quality of life”.

Or, to put it another way, money isn’t everything and, by the way, we modern Conservatives understand that, and that there is such a thing as society, too.

Cameron wanted “to let the sunshine in”. A year before, the British economy had shrunk by about 5 per cent during the global financial crisis. Then, that collapse was a post-war record and enough to end 13 years of Labour rule; now those days seem like a halcyon era of optimism and stability.

Now look. A quarter of the population is unofficially on the dole, new car sales are the lowest since 1946 and the economy will likely shrink by 15 to 20 per cent over a year; a long recession is possible. Even if a vaccine is swiftly developed, the “scarring” of busted businesses and lost investment will constrain recovery for far longer, and consumer confidence will be depressed. If we stay too frightened to spend, the economy will take years to recover. Plus Brexit, of course...

The latest data from the Office for National Statistics shows we’re more unhappy than at any time since Cameron came up with his rather sweet, complacent, pink-cheeked idea about promoting happiness – and the reason is precisely about money, or lack of it because of the Covid-19 pandemic: Turns out money matters after all. There you go.

We are a very anxious people, you’ll be unsurprised to learn, and not just about dying a horrible death. Almost a half of the population are experiencing high levels of anxiety; when Cameron’s happiness indices got going in 2012 the figure was one in five. About 25 million Britons are now officially anxious about their own futures.

Before our modern plague struck so suddenly, the annual “happiness” data showed a remarkable degree of chirpiness in the British nation. The average rating, out of ten, people awarded for their personal “life satisfaction” varied very little year to year. From a low average rating of 7.4 in 2012 to a recent high of 7.9, in the last quarter of last year, it was showing a fairly steady improvement, apparently not greatly moved by Brexit and various political storms. Now, though, it has slumped to 6.9, very low by the usual standard.

The worries do indeed revolve around personal financial security. General concern about “wellbeing” – boredom, anxiety, stress – comes top – but specific fear about health actually ranks below the effects on work, household finances and schooling. Those who are self-employed and who rent their homes are most nervous, and many more families fear not being able to save enough money to protect against future trouble. Women worry more than men, because they tend not to be the main household earners, and if they do work, they are often lower paid. For similar reasons, people with disabilities are also fearful.

And so a concept – happiness – that was supposed to make us reflect on our relative prosperity and historically high standards of living now serves to remind us how much about our lives we took too easily for granted, and how easily we ignored some of the threats to it – including the fantastical idea of some pandemic from China visiting medieval misery upon us. Still, look on the bright side, as old Cameron might say.