Emerald City loses lustre of happiness – but it’s not alone
I recently learned what a stressed-out city Sydney is, then discovered unhappiness is a spreading condition, particularly affecting young people.
I recently spent a weekend in beautiful Sydney.
We wandered Circular Quay, as you do. Enjoyed the light rail up and down George Street. Had a great meal in the CBD. Wandered through the excellent Art Gallery of NSW and had a coffee in the Domain.
But on the plane back home I wondered this: Why is everybody in Sydney so unhappy? Why do its citizens – from shopkeepers to wait staff, commuters to window shoppers, apartment dwellers to semi-detached suburbanites – all look like they’ve all been dunked in an Olympic-sized pool of grey paint and stuffed full of antidepressants?
Why did everything, and everyone, appear so gloomy and downcast?
Happiness is, of course, subjective. One person’s happiness is another person’s … blah blah blah. (See any clutch of Hallmark greeting cards.)
But I worried for Sydney for several reasons. First, it’s one of the great cities of the world, culturally and physically. Second, I have a great affection for the place because I lived there for more than 20 years. Third, I have many close friends and family still residing in the city. Fourth, my wife was born there and is a Sydneysider through and through.
So I have enormous affection for Sydney.
Why, then, to my ageing eyes, does the Emerald City appear so disheartened, flat, and in need of a literal and metaphorical lick of paint or, at the very least, a cursory spruce-up? A tonic? An energy drink thunderstorm?
Several mates in Sydney told me the same thing: “I’m looking for a way out of here. Just don’t tell anybody.”
I needed to get to the bottom of this so, as a last-ditch effort (why not?), I asked AI: Why do people in Sydney appear so unhappy?
It replied: “Sydney residents’ perceived unhappiness stems from several interconnected issues, including a high cost of living and housing affordability crisis, long commutes and traffic congestion, and a demanding work-life balance. These stressors can lead to financial strain, decreased time for social interaction, and a general feeling of being ‘stretched too thin’. Additionally, the city’s large size can contribute to anonymity and a less communal atmosphere compared to smaller towns.”
Under the work-life balance section, it added: “The need to balance the high cost of living with work commitments leaves many Sydneysiders feeling time-poor and frazzled, unable to enjoy the city’s amenities.”
It also had a “social factors” mini-chapter, which declared: “Some residents and visitors describe a sense of ‘coldness’ or anti-social behaviour, which is often linked to the pressures of living in a large, expensive city where people are more focused on financial survival.”
It concluded: “While Sydney offers many benefits, the cumulative effect of high costs, commuting and a demanding lifestyle creates significant stress for many residents, contributing to feelings of unhappiness and a desire to leave the city.”
I felt this was all a bit too harsh and unfair on Sydney. Surely these factors could apply to any major metropolis anywhere in the world in 2025.
Then I read the results from the annual Happy City Index.
The index is compiled by a group called the Institute for Quality of Life, based in London, which “monitors, analyses and studies areas related to community decision-making, the creation of social policies, the implementation of public services” and so on.
One of its missions through its data is to provide “reliable research on human wellbeing in a given environment”.
The 2025 index was released just a few months ago and revealed that out of 200 cities, Sydney ranked 75. This appeared pretty respectable given that in last year’s index the NSW capital weighed in at 116. (Forty-one places up the charts, with a bullet!)
A closer look at the data, however, revealed that this year Adelaide (29), Canberra (51) and Melbourne (67) all pipped Sydney in the happiness stakes, with Brisbane (78) trailing them. (Darwin scraped in at number 146, sandwiched between Cambridge and Krakow, with Perth at a limp 165.)
For the record, Copenhagen was ranked the happiest city on Earth.
But Adelaide out-smiling Sydney? Really? And Canberra, the world’s largest purpose-built roundabout, was having more fun than Australia’s founding metropolis?
Hot on the heels of the city happiness ranking came the World Happiness Report from the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford in England. (Who knew our happiness was so relentlessly and exhaustively monitored?)
This study focused on “the impact of caring and sharing on people’s happiness” across the globe and evaluated “life evaluations” such as “GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, having a sense of freedom to make key life decisions, average frequency of donations, and perceptions of corruption in government and business”.
The results? Finland grabbed the top spot while Australia sat at a respectable 11, solidly ahead of the UK (23) and the US (24). Poor Afghanistan came last at 147.
It wasn’t all roses. Australia, along with Japan and the US, did show a worrying decrease in social connection among the young.
What are we to make of all these comparative happiness studies pitting cities and countries against each other like some Eurovision-style contest?
It would be foolish to ignore them if a new study out of University College London is anything to go by.
Alex Bryson, professor of quantitative social science at UCL’s Social Research Institute, this month released a paper, “The declining mental health of the young and the global disappearance of the unhappiness hump shape”.
Before you get any silly ideas, the “unhappiness hump shape” is the reverse U-
shape on a chart traditionally reflecting human happiness and unhappiness across a
lifespan. Professor Bryson’s hump is taken from the perspective of unhappiness. So
if you look at the graph, unhappiness is low when you’re young, rises up during
middle age, then dips back down towards happiness as you enter old age. Thus the
inverted “U” hump.
But Bryson’s new data has altered the shape of all that.
As Professor Bryson recently wrote in The Conversation: “Our new research on illbeing, based on data from 44 countries including the US and UK, shows this established pattern has changed. We now see a peak of unhappiness among the young, which then declines with age. The change isn’t due to middle-aged and older people getting happier, but to a deterioration in young people’s mental health.”
Concerningly, “levels of despair” across age groups have skewed significantly. More concerningly, a new and foreboding word – “illbeing” – seems to have entered the lexicon.
Professor Bryson added: “Between 2009 and 2018, despair is hump-shaped in age. However, the rapid rise in despair before the age of 45, and especially before the mid-20s, has fundamentally changed the life cycle profile of despair. This means that the hump-shape is no longer apparent between 2019 and 2024. Despair rose the most for the youngest group but also rose for those up to age 45; it remained unchanged for those aged over 45.”
So there. Sydney, it’s not your fault.
Then again, we all might be better served by not obsessing with where and how we live, with who’s got a bigger house or a fancier car, with keeping up with the mythical Joneses, thinking all this is the bedrock of our happiness, and spending more time on making sure our young people are in a happier place moving into the future.
Wouldn’t that be a more prudent investment?
Wishful thinking, you might say.
But wouldn’t the world be a better place if we brought back the happiness hump?
Bring Back the Hump.
That doesn’t just belong on a greeting card.
That’s T-shirt worthy.
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