Wellbeing in Britain and Ireland

After yesterday's post on life satisfaction in Europe, Liam noted to me that it was quite unusual to see Ireland ranking below Britain given how highly Ireland usually scores on wellbeing indexes. I went back to the European Social Survey to double-check the life satisfaction figures and I supplemented them with a measure of happiness. The same pattern is borne out in both measures - Ireland seems to have experienced a notable drop in wellbeing between 2008 and 2010, the worst years of the recession, and this drop persists up to 2012 at least.