‘Happiness recession’: UK 15-year-olds at bottom of European satisfaction league

More 15-year-olds are reporting low life satisfaction in the UK than anywhere else in Europe, amid what experts are describing as a “happiness recession” for British teenagers.

The group is at the bottom of European rankings in terms of life satisfaction across 27 nations, analysis by the Children’s Society reveals. In the UK 25% of 15-year-olds reported low life satisfaction, compared with 7% of Dutch children of the same age – the lowest level among any of the countries surveyed.

British girls are particularly affected, as are children from disadvantaged backgrounds, with food poverty highlighted as a key reason behind the poor wellbeing numbers.

“Alarm bells are ringing,” said Mark Russell, the chief executive of the Children’s Society. “UK teenagers are facing a happiness recession, with 15-year-olds recording the lowest life satisfaction on average across 27 European nations.”

In 2021-22, children aged 10 to 15 recorded mean scores for happiness with their life as a whole, as well as with their friends, appearance, school and schoolwork, that were all significantly lower than in 2009-10, the report found.

Levels of low life satisfaction are at least twice as high among UK 15-year-olds as among their peers in Finland, Denmark, Romania, Portugal, Croatia and Hungary. The study uses data from the UK Longitudinal Household Survey from 2021-22 and the OECD’s programme for international student assessment (Pisa) from 2022.

The findings come amid growing concern at school absences, long NHS waiting times to receive mental health support and increases in the cost of living in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis pushing more families into poverty.

“Children and young people deserve better,” the report says. “Decisive action and national leadership are needed to overturn the decline in children’s wellbeing. We know that these experiences are not lived in a vacuum … The pandemic, rising levels of poverty, concerns over young people’s safety, the climate emergency and other stresses have put a strain on young people’s lives and can prevent the experience of a happy and fulfilled childhood.”

Dutch teenagers have ranked as among the happiest in the world for several years, with supportive parents, low inequality, teachers who are not authoritarian but accept the feelings of pupils, and high levels of self-determination – for example cycling to school and being allowed to decide when to come home.

At the weekend the TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp sparked a debate about whether parents who restrict teenagers’ freedom were “infantilising” them, after social services contacted her after she allowed her then 15-year-old to go Interrailing in Europe independently.

“Being trusted, being confident, makes you feel better about yourself and happy,” she said. “So are our kids anxious because we are fearful, we are holding them back, and this is leading them to be depressed?”

On Tuesday the Guardian revealed more than 500 children a day in England were being referred to NHS mental health services for anxiety, more than double the rate of before the pandemic began.

The Children’s Society study, published on Thursday, also revealed that the largest gap in life satisfaction between the most and least disadvantaged 15-year-olds was in the UK.

The charity found many parents were struggling to provide basic necessities for their children, with just over one in five parents and carers finding it difficult to afford a hot meal daily, almost a quarter unable to buy a warm winter coat and just over a quarter struggling to provide daily fresh fruit and vegetables.