Sun has set on UK: 'Britons don't believe in hard work anymore'

In the enduring debate over whether one should “live to work” or “work to live,” Britons seem to be more associated with the former perspective, according to a recent study.

The study encompassing 24 nations suggests that Britons place less significance on work compared to their global counterparts. Moreover, the belief that hard work leads to a better life has dwindled among Britons.

The study, conducted by the Policy Institute at King’s College London, found that nearly one-fifth of British participants considered work unimportant in their lives, marking the highest percentage among the 24 countries under scrutiny.

This diverse group included countries like France, Sweden, the United States, Nigeria, Japan, and China.

Additionally, the research indicated that Britons were among those least inclined to prioritize work over leisure time. When it came to the belief that hard work would yield a better life in the future, just 39% of Britons held this viewpoint, ranking 12th out of 18 nations.

This figure notably lagged behind the United States, where 55% of respondents subscribed to this notion.

The study also highlighted intergenerational disparities. While the opinions of most generations regarding the primacy of work remained relatively stable, millennials – born from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s – exhibited a substantial decline in agreement with this perspective.

In 2009, 41% of millennials prioritized work, but by 2022, this figure plummeted to 14%.

Professor Bobby Duffy, the director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London and the lead researcher, attributed this shift among millennials to “long-term economic and wage stagnation.”

Younger generations, Duffy noted, were beginning to question the value of work in light of these economic challenges.

Duffy further emphasized that these findings reflected a growing sense of a broken social contract in the UK. He pointed out, “It’s definitely true that the UK is not in a good place compared with other countries on both average income levels and income inequality.”

These factors significantly impact people’s perceptions of the worthiness of work.

The study revealed that individuals who considered work highly important in their lives were primarily situated in lower- and middle-income nations.

Countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, and Nigeria topped the list. Notably, several European countries, including France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, and Norway, ranked higher than the UK in this regard.

Interestingly, since 1990, there has been an increase in the number of people in the UK who believe that luck plays an equally significant role as hard work in achieving success, rising from 40% to 49%.

Additionally, more Britons now endorse the idea that placing less emphasis on work would be beneficial, with this sentiment climbing from 26% to 43%.

Duffy argued that while specific factors in the UK contribute to these trends, there is also a broader, long-term shift in preferences for work-life balance in many affluent nations.

The study also examined perceptions of individuals who are not engaged in work.

The UK was second only to Sweden in being less likely to label non-workers as lazy. Duffy suggested that this shift reflects a cultural change away from the “benefits cheat” rhetoric prevalent in the 2000s.

He noted that several studies indicate a declining belief that welfare benefits are overly generous and that beneficiaries are undeserving.

This analysis was conducted as part of the World Values Survey (WVS), one of the world’s largest and most widely used academic social surveys since 1981. Ipsos collected nationally representative data from 3,056 UK adults in 2022 for this research.