ACCORDING to Bobby Kennedy, speaking in 1968, the problem with GDP is that it “measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” As he pointed out, GDP “counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armoured cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programmes which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.” Forty-four years later, one group is trying to catch up—the British government. This morning, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published the first provisional “national well-being report”, which attempts to measure the “subjective well-being of individuals, which is measured by finding out how people think and feel about their own lives.“ The idea started with David Cameron, who, back in the (possibly?) happier days of November 2010, denounced the “incomplete” GDP statistic, and called for a better measure of national happiness—dismissing the idea that it would be “wooly and impractical.” So how has it turned out? To gather data, 165,000 people were asked to answer the following questions with a ranking from 1 to 10: Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?

Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?

Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?

Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that, despite an “Eeyorish attitude”, as the New York Times puts it, it turns out that the British are quite happy. 76% of people ranked their happiness as greater than 7 out of 10, while 80% ranked their lives' worthwhile-ness as greater than 7.

People with partners are happier and report higher scores on average than those who are single, widowed or divorced. Home-owners are happier than renters. The disabled and those in bad health are far less happy and far more anxious than healthy, able-bodied people. As are unemployed people.

More surprisingly, black Britons are far less happy than other ethnic minorities or than white people. Londoners are also the grumpiest, least self-assured and most anxious of all—the capital comes out worse than all other regions (that may not be a surprise). And middle-aged people are also less happy than younger or older people—the mid-life crisis is not a myth, it seems.

All of which is interesting, but hardly ground-breaking. You don’t need an ONS database to know that if you make people healthier and give them work then they will be happier. But an interesting thought is what will happen over time. The ONS hasn't measured happiness relative to income levels within its sample, but given a decade or two of data, it would presumably be easy enough to regress levels of happiness or “life satisfaction” against, say, GDP. We would then be able to see whether increasing GDP makes people happier or not.

In short, we would be able to tell whether, by measuring everything else, GDP might actually provide a proxy for “all that is worthwhile.” If so, then politicians can carry on using GDP as a proxy for national success. If not, well, we may have to start rethinking things a little—perhaps as Bobby Kennedy suggested.