One in four children in Britain is unhappy with their life and could face grave consequences when they grow up, a leading think tank has warned.\u00a0The Centre for Social Justice has sounded the alarm about unhappiness in the UK, warning 719,000 people live in \u201cmisery\u201d \u2013 more than the population of Sheffield.<\/p>\n
There is particular concern about the impact of unhappy childhoods on later life success.\u00a0The think tank\u2019s new report states: \u201cBy age 29, a very happy adolescence is associated with an income about 10% higher than average, whereas a very unhappy adolescence is associated with 30% lower income than average.\u201d<\/p>\n
It also flags up a \u201ccrisis of parental involvement\u201d, stating that in just four years the number of families speaking to teachers about their child\u2019s progress has fallen by 24 percentage points to 53%.<\/p>\n
The research comes on the heels of warnings severe school absence is \u201calmost triple pre-pandemic levels\u201d and alarm \u201cnearly one in seven young people not in education, employment or training\u201d.<\/p>\n
Threats to children\u2019s wellbeing are so serious the respected think tank warns of the danger of a \u201cbreakdown of social fabric\u201d. When the think tank analysed happiness, life satisfaction, \u201cworthwhileness\u201d and anxiety it concluded \u201cmore people than the population of Sheffield now live in misery in the UK\u201d.<\/p>\n
It cautions that quality of life is about more than just \u201cpounds and pence\u201d and argues Governments have been too focused on monthly GDP scores.<\/p>\n
The report pushes for the Labour Government to follow the example of Scotland and Northern Ireland and introduce a wellbeing strategy.<\/p>\n
Ed Davies, the CSJ\u2019s director of research, said: \u201cThe narrow focus on GDP and tyranny of the Treasury is blinding the Government to the cracks in our society\u2019s foundations that people are falling through.<\/p>\n
\u201cDissatisfied children lead to unhappy adults. Solving wellbeing starts with sound policy for early years development\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Davies questioned the cross-party push for greater childcare provision so parents can go out to work, stating that \u201cdespite being one of the world\u2019s wealthiest nations we have some of the least happy children\u201d<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cOur own polling has found that 70% of working parents would like to spend more time caring for their child, and almost half of parents with pre-school children would like to stop working altogether if they could; this is not a popular policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is also concern about the stresses on older Britons.<\/p>\n
The report states: \u201cPeople in middle age have the lowest life satisfaction of any age group. This period corresponds to the time of life with the most caring responsibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CSJ has estimated \u201c400,000 carers had to leave their jobs to care for older or disabled family members in 2021-22\u201d.<\/p>\n
The think tank is concerned by a landmark 2022 report from the OECD on young people which found one in four students in the UK are not satisfied. This compares with 18% for other OECD nations.<\/p>\n
It warns: \u201cIf child wellbeing predicts adult wellbeing, then we are approaching a generation of unhappy adults.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Department for Education spokesperson said: \u201cHigh and rising standards are at the heart of the government\u2019s mission to break down barriers to opportunity, ensuring all children and young people can achieve and thrive.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur Plan for Change sets out our relentless focus on making sure every child gets the best life chances, no matter their background, including establishing free breakfast clubs in every primary school, providing access to mental health support and making attendance one of the four core priorities of our school improvement teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re also ensuring thousands more families will have the support of a specialist worker who can make sure they receive all the help they need from parenting to mental health or addiction support, by doubling council funding for early intervention from this year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One in four children in Britain is unhappy with their life and could face grave consequences when they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8817],"tags":[2420,748,20215,20214,15342,393,4884,20216,1620,16,15,4950,20217],"class_list":{"0":"post-34887","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sheffield","8":"tag-parenting","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-centre-for-social-justice","11":"tag-childhood-unhappiness","12":"tag-childrens-mental-health","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-parental-involvement-crisis","16":"tag-sheffield","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-wellbeing","20":"tag-wellbeing-strategy"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114368851797412223","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}