Analysing statistics always needs to be done carefully. But the recent Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey draws together many of the strands which regular readers of the JEP will recognise from these columns.
Firstly, it tells us that respondents reported lower perceptions of wellbeing here than in similar studies in the UK. And quite markedly so, particularly amongst women; in the UK, women reported 10% higher life satisfaction, 11% higher scores for feeling worthwhile and 7% higher happiness than in Jersey, compared with smaller differences among men (6%, 4% and 1% respectively).
A common reaction to measures such as that is to quickly compare it to our own experience – does it feel that life has become much more difficult in Jersey, and if so, why and in what way?
Once again, the survey provides some suggestions, reporting that the proportion of households saying they could not afford enough heating to keep warm rose from 11% in 2017 to 23% this year – with 13% reporting they could not afford a car.
Further, we’re told that 26% of adults reported a perception of being “very time poor” – presumably because they are working so hard to make ends meet.
What this data set does is to give some shape to the actual effects of the rising cost of living in Jersey; it is not the only answer, but working harder and harder to earn enough money is the obvious link between having less time for social connections, with growing feelings of anxiety, and with being unable to afford a week away (36% of households).
It is clearly not surprising that perceptions of general wellbeing seem to be falling away in Jersey, when compared with the UK.
What is perhaps surprising is that despite the regular coverage of what we often term “the cost of living crisis” there doesn’t yet appear to be a clear and cohesive political focus on addressing it.
Debate in the run-up to the Budget – which one might expect to be the obvious time to talk about it – has, in the main, focussed on the scale of the public sector, the amount we are spending, saving and borrowing, and the use of various government funds.
All of those are clearly important topics, and deserve our attention. However, all of them get worse if people act on a simple calculation about where might they feel better off, and therefore generally happier? In Jersey or elsewhere? Our worries in recent years about immigration are nothing compared to the effects of wider emigration.
