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A good way to assess the happiness or misery of people living in the different regions of England is to examine what social scientists call “Deaths of Despair”. This is the collective term for those who die because of suicide, drugs or alcohol, which is something that is more than twice as likely to happen in the North East of England than in London.
Anguish and self-destruction may be caused by social deprivation, unemployment, poor job expectations, debt and other factors, but the excess deaths are concentrated in the North, according to a study of Deaths of Despair in England over two years. The 10 cities with the greatest mortality are all in the North with Blackpool, Middlesborough and Hartlepool suffering the heaviest loss of life.
Other statistics tell the same grim story with the 15.5 million Britons in the North East, North West, and the Yorkshire and the Humber regions having a life expectancy nearly two years lower than the country as a whole. When it comes to regional economic inequalities, the UK is the fourth highest out of 38 OECD countries.
