I’ve long been sceptical of big chunks of social science research. Take the hard sciences – where these days various studies show that well over half of all published peer-reviewed findings cannot be replicated – and then remember that the social science variant of research is way less reliable than the hard science stuff. Social science research often consists in asking people things about themselves. The questions can be (well, often are) slanted. People who answer can (and often do) lie. Loads of it is ‘qualitative’, which is simply a word for ‘statistically meaningless’ and I have no idea why that sort of stuff carries any great weight at all.

All that conceded, you can get some interesting and indicative results from the statistically meaningful variety. Take the recently released ‘2024 World Happiness Report’ that was conducted by Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre and others. This research, subject as I said to the limitations of all social science research, tried to measure people’s assessment of their own quality of life in countries around the world. This year’s data was based on a three-year average (2021 to 2023) of responses. The basic idea is to get people’s sense of their own happiness. And they came up with an overall ranking of countries. Plus a ranking of countries as regards those under 30 years of age. And another for those over 60 years of age. As many readers will know the Scandinavian countries often score at the top of these results, as they did this time.  The Finns, Danes, Icelanders and Swedes took the top four spots overall in that order.  Maybe there’s something about the long, cold winters, the stoicism, blonde hair and the Viking heritage. Who knows? Anyway, Israel came next at fifth overall. We in Australia came tenth; Canada 15th; the UK 20th; and the US 23rd.  All much of a muchness you might quite plausibly say. But here is what has some Anglophone commentators speculating.

It’s the difference between what the oldies (60 plus) and youngies (30 and under) report. I said that my native Canada scored 15th overall. But in the breakdown Canada’s oldies were 8th happiest in the world but the youngies were 58th happiest. In the UK, 20th overall, the oldies also came 20th but the youngies were 32nd. In the US, 23rd overall, the oldies came 10th but the youngies were 62nd (so it’s not the cost of housing because it’s cheap there). And even here in Australia our overall tenth place masked a 9th place for oldies and 19th place for youngies. Heck, the same applies in New Zealand where the old came 6th happiest but the young 27th. Put bluntly, the young in the Anglophone world are not nearly as comparatively happy as the old. Yet this isn’t true anywhere in the Scandinavian world, where the rankings for age groups are similar or the young are happier. It’s not true either in Holland or the Czech Republic or Germany. In Israel the youngies are 2nd happiest in the world while the oldies come in 18th happiest. But in all of the main rich Anglosphere countries this result is consistently there. In comparative terms, we oldies are way happier than the youngies.

If this research means anything – and I’m always half sceptical – but if it does then the obvious question is why are the young in the English-speaking rich world so comparatively unhappy. Any theories? You might be tempted to say, ‘well, we oldies basically shut down the world for two-plus years and in a way that was much more palatable to the oldies than the youngies; we transferred huge wealth from the youngies to us oldies (thank you, asset inflation); we shut down schools; we made them do university by zoom’ – which, believe me, was basically useless and required us to bring (shall we say) slightly less rigorous assessment standards to bear while doing nothing to bring back the missed parties in the last year of high school or the fun first year of university. Oh, and we locked them in tiny apartments while we oldies had comparatively spacious houses. All true. And I defer to no one in Australia in being incandescently angry about the panicked, principleless and pusillanimous politicians and public heath-types who imposed the thuggery of illiberal, ineffective and catastrophically expensive lockdowns on us.  Nor will I ever forget. But lockdowns can’t explain this difference in comparative happiness between age groups, I’m afraid. Israel’s lockdowns were very heavy-handed. Yet their youngies were second-happiest in the world. No-lockdown Sweden’s young were comparatively less happy (18th) than the old there (4th).

Meanwhile, here’s one theory I’ve read that seems to me to be pretty plausible as far as explaining why the youngies in the rich Anglosphere countries are so comparatively unhappy. It boils down to us oldies in Britain, the US, Canada and here educating the young to hate their own countries; to feel no pride in its accomplishments; to recite regularly ritualistic little land acknowledgement slogans about ‘traditional owners of the land’ that if taken seriously demand the return of the land and if not are tokenistic, patronising, condescending and barf-inducing; to believe their own country’s history is uniquely bad; to devalue patriotism in overt and explicit terms; to have to self-censor should they hold any ideas or notions that go against the views of the metropolitan, green-left elites; to not understand or believe in free speech (sort of like former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, I hear you say); to pretend men can be women. The list goes on. But if this is what you do to the young is it any wonder they are unhappy? If this is how they’re educated are you surprised? And, of course, it is all factually wrong. These English-speaking countries ended slavery. No other countries on earth did that though slavery existed everywhere. These countries defeated fascism and spent huge amounts of taxpayer monies under the Marshall plan to give Europeans a life after the second world war. They created the most desirable places to live on earth in the history of humankind (which is why so many millions, nay billions, want to come here). But we oldies let the nihilistic wokesters take over the main cultural and educational institutions in the Anglosphere – and notice that the French don’t cave in to those who take down statues or try to remove street names or paintings. We in the Anglosphere do. Recall that Canada’s young scored 58th and the America’s 62nd happiest but the oldies, respectively, scored 8th and 10th. If that’s basically true it’s a big problem.

Meanwhile, compare that to Israel. There they are in an existential struggle to survive. Life is significantly more dangerous. And yet the youngies in Israel are the second happiest in the world. Maybe it’s because they think there’s something worth preserving and fighting for, something glorious even, in their country and culture? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Coalition here in Australia one day started taking the culture wars seriously? You see, it’s like Poland in 1939. You might not want to fight them but they’re going to fight you regardless. And if this data is correct, they’re winning and our young are the real losers.