By the end of the first season of True Detective – some would say the only season of True Detective – Matthew McConaughey’s character, Rust, has been through a lot. Hunting a killer for nearly 20 years, he’s battled addiction, isolation and pain. He’s lost family, colleagues and friends. He’s gone undercover in a biker gang. He’s finally found the killer he was looking for – but was badly injured in the process. Staggering out of the hospital at night, he muses about the eternal struggle between light and dark. In the final words of the series, he’s optimistic, concluding that ‘the light’s winning’.
I’m reminded of that scene when I see this chart, which measures the life events the UK population have experienced over the past 12 months. It isn’t boring, yet. We think it probably will be soon.
The chart shows the proportion of the population who experienced more positive life events than negative ones in the last year (green line) and the proportion who experienced more negative than positive (red).
Positive life events are: getting married, travelling abroad, having a child, completing education, having a grandchild. Negative life events are: getting divorced, experiencing a bereavement of someone close to you, a period of ill health, a period of unemployment.
Life events on the edge
Life events are an underrated component of how we feel. During the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2011 Trajectory were delivered a project for Which? exploring the lasting impacts of a turbulent few years. We covered the initial warning signs in the global economy through the run on Northern Rock, the collapse of Lehmann Brothers and the (at the time – it’s been a volatile decade) deepest, longest downturn in living memory.
In qualitative conversations with members of the public we gave them material to remind them of these events, and encouraged them to dig out their own mementos of the period – looking through calendars and diaries, Facebook posts and payslips. What had their life been like?
We found three factors influenced their experiences. Two were already well understood.
Firstly, the nuts and bolts of their financial situation. Unsurprisingly, most (but not all) of the people on lower incomes had had a worse time and most (but not all) of the people on higher incomes had had an easier time.
Cutting across that was factor two – their financial habits. Some on higher incomes had struggled to rein in spending and reduce dependency on credit cards. Some on lower incomes had negotiated a trying period with astute money management.
The third factor was life events. This was the first thing people mentioned in conversations when we asked them to think back over the previous few years. Less important than fluctuations in VAT (being cut to 15% in November 2008 and then hiked to 20% two years later) were things like family weddings and the arrival of children or grandchildren. Holidays, for those that had had them, were vital - and happy - bookmarks of the time.
In these cases, positive life events acted as a kind of bulwark against misery: sentiment might be higher than we’d expect, because there’d been enough positivity outside of the household balance sheet.
The opposite was also true: negative life events – bereavement, separation, a period of ill health – could all turn security into precarity. For those already struggling, negative life events could push them further underwater.
What does this mean?
Life events: important. And, as we consider the national mood at a time of sticky inflation, spreading global conflict and public service failure, a rare source of good news. As the chart above shows, the proportion of people who’ve had more good life events than bad has increased in the last couple of years, and has overtaken the proportion of people who’ve endured the opposite. As Rust would say: the light is winning.
But the light should always win. The balance of life events we experience is pretty consistent. The lines have only crossed because something was tilting the scales for a couple of years.
During Covid, the good things couldn’t happen. Or they could, but were just much less likely to. Foreign travel? Very difficult, quite scary. Weddings? Not the same, better to postpone. Bundles of joy? No one thought lockdown would be improved by the presence of a(nother) baby (spoken as someone who went into the pandemic with a four-month old).
But the bad things could happen. In fact, they could probably happen more than usual. Covid had a direct impact on bereavement and illness, including both physical and mental ill health. Although millions of jobs were protected by furlough, many weren’t.
The crossover in the chart isn’t a trend, it’s a correction, back to the norm.
This is worth bearing in mind as the public mood turns sour in response to a fairly doomstery narrative from the new government. In July, we recorded the first positive score in our Optimism Index since January 2022. But by August we were back in negative territory amid warnings of public sector spending cuts and tax rises and riots across the country. In September that sentiment declined further. But, difficult though times have been – and remain – for most people the balance of their life events will be a persistent cause of positivity.
More than this
If you want more information on this trend or the amazing analytical power of our Optimism Index, with its 125,000 interviews on a rotating selection of topics since 2018 – and you should! – here are some options…
If you’re a Trajectory Now & Next member… trends commentary on shifting family dynamics and the changing meaning of age is here, along with previous trends briefings on the slow and fast drivers of the cost of living crisis here.
If you’re not a Trajectory Now & Next member… why not? More information on signing up is here.
Whoever you are… on Thursday 26th September at 9am we’re hosting a free trends briefing exploring the public mood - and the impact of life events on it - as we hurtle towards the golden quarter. You can sign up for that here.