Up and down

In YemenThe poorest country in the Gulf region is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. , more than 80% of people live below the international poverty lineThe International Poverty Line represents the international equivalent of what .90 could buy in the United States of America in 2011. .¹ The UK, meanwhile, is in the top 25 richest countries, with a GDPShort for Gross Domestic Product, the measure of all the goods and services produced inside a country. per head around 66 times higher than Yemen's.²

But if you went around BirminghamA major city in England. It has a population of more than one million. and the Yemeni capital of Sana'a and asked people how happy they were, you would get a surprising result.

Britain is the second-most miserable country in the world, according to a new survey, unhappier than Yemen, which placed ninth.

Perhaps this is not so surprising, some say. It is hard to deny things are in decline. Average incomes have stayed the same for 15 years.³ Three quarters of Britons think the country is becoming a worse place to live.⁴

Others say Brits are genetically hardwired to be down. Research has found that the British and French have a "short" version of the gene that regulates serotoninA chemical messenger believed to boost people's mood. , the "happiness chemical".⁵

And this might not be such a bad thing. Visitors to the UK often marvel at how British people seem to relishEnjoy greatly. Or a type of sauce! their own misery. Perhaps being miserable is what makes us happy.

But others say it is not good to be miserable all the time. They say it stops us from getting anything done.

For example, some hope that by telling people it is almost too late to stop climate breakdown, it might spur them into action. Instead, research shows it just makes them less likely to do anything.

In contrast, when shown how to positively address a crisis, people become more engaged. The philosopher Toby Ord has even come up with a complex mathematical formulaA formula is a group of mathematical symbols and numbers that show how to work something out. to demonstrate that being pessimisticTending to believe that the worst will happen. is unproductive.

Yet others think pessimism might be an unavoidable sign of the times. If you ask people in the UK and France if things are getting better, less than five in every hundred people will say yes. But in China, where nearly 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty in the last 40 years, 41% agree things are improving.⁶

Is pessimism pointless?

Yes: There is no point in denying things are going badly. But we will not solve them by wallowing in our own misery. People will only work to make them better if they have reason to hope.

No: A can-do attitude is not going to solve deep underlying economic issues. Britain is facing a problem that goes back decades. So people might as well be clear-eyed about its scale.

Or: Misery is part of the national culture. But it was not always like that: Britain used to be known as "Merry England". Perhaps the country can get back that sense of joy.