In 2006, amid a deceptive economic stability, a young opposition leader called David Cameron declared: “It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money and it’s time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB — general wellbeing.” He became prime minister during an economic crisis in 2010, but nevertheless gave the Office for National Statistics the task of collecting surveys of wellbeing data.

Despite all the fanfare, pretty soon nobody cared about the results. Which is disappointing, because, much as I am sceptical of the utility of such crude surveys, the findings have been counterintuitive. Before Covid, metrics such as self-reported life satisfaction and happiness showed consistent improvement, despite a decade marred by weak economic growth and Brexit’s political turmoil.

It is striking. Asked on a scale of one to ten whether they were satisfied with their lives (zero being “not at all” to ten “completely”), the public’s average score rose from 7.42 in 2011-12 to 7.66 by 2019–20. In that period, the proportion of the population with scores of seven or above increased from 76 per cent to 81 per cent.

This was no anomaly, either. Improvements were seen in how worthwhile people considered their lives (7.67 to 7.86), their happiness (7.29 to 7.47) and their anxiety levels (which fell from 3.13 to 3.05). Those might look like small changes, but other studies conclude that divorces or unemployment, on average, reduce a person’s happiness by about 0.3 to 0.5 points. Therefore mean national happiness rising by almost 0.2 points is pretty significant.

These improvements were flattered by demographic shifts. Over the decade, the population share of some of the happiest age groups increased (those aged 65 to 84), while the proportion in the unhappiest age group fell (those aged 40 to 59). Some of the improvement thus was due to the mechanistic impact of population ageing. Yet, overall, the rise in reported happiness seems as if it should have been noteworthy among the general doom and gloom, just as the sharp fall in these metrics during the pandemic might be considered a concern. Self-reported life satisfaction, perceived worth and happiness remain far below their pre-pandemic peaks, at levels last seen around 2014. Reported anxiety is back at levels comparable with the dark days of 2011.

I opposed these surveys’ introduction, because I worried about how measuring national happiness risked encouraging speculative policy. Trying to raise economic output was one thing, but a disparate population’s life satisfaction? The whole rationale seemed based on a false premise, too. The idea that maximising GDP was ever government’s aim is fanciful. Economists have long articulated how GDP doesn’t account for externalities and non-market activities; politicians’ campaigns against housebuilding and immigration show that they often prioritise other goals.

What was striking, however, was just how quickly both the Cameroons and the supportive centre-left cooled on the idea of happiness as a government target, despite the surveys existing. The result? Nobody has tried a causal evaluation for why self-reported wellbeing improved despite austerity, relative economic stagnation and the Brexit wars, before plunging during Covid.

No doubt some happiness champions lost interest because the evidence quashed the case for their pet policies. In the 2000s, some progressives suggested that greater material equality — closing the gap between the “haves” and “have nots” — was necessary to reduce anxiety and enhance happiness. Yet income inequality was largely flat between 2011 and 2019, with the income share of the top 1 per cent rising. Wellbeing metrics improved anyway.

Others probably concluded that traditional economic indicators — such as unemployment, growth and wealth — were not so in conflict with people’s happiness after all. The survey began in the Great Recession’s aftermath and psychological wellbeing ticked up alongside unemployment falling, (slow) growth resuming and financial wealth rising, before falling during the pandemic, which caused a sharp economic downturn.

Maybe the wellbeing improvement would have been stronger still with faster growth. Or it could just be that happiness economics reflected the complacency of an age of abundance, when other economic policy was largely thought settled. The financial crisis, then Brexit, the pandemic and our recent inflation were all unexpected crises. Whatever the reason, the clear consequence is that the happiness agenda turned out to be an economic fad.

Yet this sharp abandonment of the concept is deeply unsatisfying intellectually. Given that proponents thought that improving happiness, rather than growth, should be government’s goal, now would be a great time to hear whether they thought the surveys showed public policy had been doing well before the pandemic. It would be good to know if they thought austerity had enhanced national happiness or had constrained it from improving further. It would be useful to hear if they believe that falling unemployment during the 2010s improved happiness — a testament to Britain’s open, flexible labour market — or whether the sharp downturn across measures during the pandemic tells us anything about the scale of the cost of lockdowns. Or if other non-economic factors explain these trends.

More honest brokers, I suspect, would say something like: “Such crude personal surveys of happiness and wellbeing don’t allow us to tease out such information. You can’t use these metrics for such granular discussions of policy.” And on that we agree. But that was always a fatal flaw of the happiness agenda. Those concerns didn’t stop Cameron from saying: “We should be thinking not just what is good for putting money in people’s pockets but what is good for putting joy in people’s hearts.”

With economic growth now back as central to debates about what’s wrong with Britain, I’m left wondering: are there any happiness champions still out there and willing to account for what the surveys have shown? Or was the whole project a waste of time?