Neither
the UK nor the USA are great places to live. With buzzwords such as “shrinks”,
“falling”, “slows”, “deficit” and “doubt” plastered on the walls of economic
news, coming at living standards from an angle purely defined by trade and
industry would be inaccurate. Instead why not look into the one thing that
really matters to people; themselves, their lives, their homes, the people that
surround them. At the end of the
day they don’t care about what the net pro-rata income figure for an average individual before tax per annum
is because, chances are, it doesn’t apply to them. The closest normal,
run-of-the-mill people come to GDP is seeing their General Dental Practitioner
because they’ve eaten too much crackling at Christmas.
Dogs
were in the news this week with UK native breeds such as the English setter “at risk of extinction”[i]
in favour of more ‘glam-pups’ like Chihuahuas and Huskies. This may seem like
an irrelevant point at the moment but it all links back to happiness. David
Cameron has sent his cronies out around the UK to find out our happiness levels,
but we all know the results will be rubbish. However studies of pet ownership
have shown that “On a scale of 1-10 in terms of happiness, Nearly 7 in 10… pet owners
ranked 7-10”[ii]and that amongst pet-owners and non-pet
owners 81% of those surveyed agree that “Pets
are the antidote to a bad mood”[iii].
Therefore, there is a definite correlation between owning a pet and being
happy. This means that the more pets there are in a place, the more happy
people there are, thus making it a more welcoming, friendly place to live. In
the UK in 2011 22% of households were recorded as owning a dog alone, and some
65.5% of households owned some kind of pet. For me, this is fantastic as more
and more pets means more and more happy people. Obviously if you don’t like
dogs or cats or have allergies, this wouldn’t apply. In America the situation is much the same, with 62% of
households owning at least one pet and dogs and cats topping in at 39.2% and
32.9% of households respectively. Clearly, the vast number of households in the
USA over bares that of the UK, meaning there would be significantly more pets
in the United States than in the UK, yet it is important to consider that the
pet-to-people ratio would be roughly the same in both countries. Of course we
mustn’t forget that dog is a man’s best friend.
Friends and family obviously come into the
things-the-average-person-cares-about region. One of the biggest killers of
these relatives are road traffic accidents so clearly the place you decide to
live would need to have a safe road network. In the UK we find that 0.33% of
the population have had an accident in the last year, approximately 208,648
accidents in total. However when we look at the USA, there is a vast difference
with the number of traffic accidents jumping to 1.75% of the population (a
whopping 5,505,000 in total) have had a traffic accident in 2009. Now clearly
there are some holes we need to pick at here before we can draw a fair
conclusion. For instance, what is the definition of a ‘traffic accident’? It
could range from a minor dink on the high street to a forty car pileup on the
M25, there’s just so much scope. How many people were injured? Were they
serious injuries? Deaths? Write offs? The questions go on. However I still
think that this is an important factor when comparing the two countries.
Another aspect you would find in the top ten things
in people’s lives would be their family home. In my opinion, the bigger the
better. Although some people may argue with this with adjectives such as cosy, warm and personal I think that it applies in this situation. Now, the
Americans are renowned for having big, lavish houses so it is more than likely that
they will come out on top in terms of floor space. Nevertheless, here in the UK
we have an average total floor area of 80 meters squared, which equates to 1
hundredth of a football pitch. This may sound miniscule, but this tiny average
figure is due to the massive amount of flat blocks found in the UK. This can be seen by the fact there is approximately “2.3 people per dwelling”[iv]demonstrating
that most ‘dwellings’ are small. However in America we see slightly higher
figures at 3.25 people per dwelling[v]. Now
although this may be a higher figure we must consider the implications of it,
such as overcrowding. If there are more people per dwelling it doesn’t
necessarily mean that it is a bigger dwelling it may just mean there is less
space per person.
Overall, if you find cats, dogs, family, friends and
your assets an important factor in deciding where you live, then firstly you
should probably get your head checked but most importantly it is clear to see
that it depends which angle you approach this from, whether it be pessimistic
or optimistic. From my point of view I would plump for the good old fashioned
United Kingdom. Of course there may be an element of bias here, but for me, my
likes and desires combined with the data explored earlier shows that there is
only one winner here. UK.
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