The rightwing papers, plus the Indy, have written up the results of an Office of National Statistics (ONS) report showing that though Britons are wealthier and healthier than in 1971, the same proportion still complain about their lot.
"Happiness levels have not increased - stuck at 80%," the Sun's reporter says. Or you could look at that another way. Happiness levels at 80%? That's high.
The Telegraph shuns comparisons with the 70s and instead looks at 1987 - possibly as an excuse to run pictures of that year's icons: Andre Agassi and his mullet, Glenn Close and Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction, and Rick Astley. In 1987, the paper says, real household net wealth per head in the UK was £51,818. By 2006 this had doubled to £114,000.
So is there a stubborn rump of British malcontents, constant throughout the ages, handing on a grump-gene from one generation to the next?
An ONS spokesman, Paul Allin, entertains the possibility: "We cannot say for certain sure whether there is just inherently a certain minimum number of the population who will always be unhappy."
The ONS is sufficiently perplexed, it tells the Mail, that it's puzzling over how to develop a measure of "societal wellbeing".
The Telegraph reports the one conclusion the ONS does offer: "The plateau effect [in satisfaction] is an example of the 'Easterlin paradox' in which the relationship between income and happiness declines after a certain level of wealth is reached."
Lord Layard could have told the ONS that. His book Happiness: Lessons from a new science, released in 2005, showed the "first world" has more depression, more alcoholism and more crime than 50 years ago. Which is what the ONS has found, just over a longer period.
The mismatch between wealth and happiness has been a central plank of David Cameron's repositioning of the Tory party. He's proposed the introduction of a category of General Well Being (GWB) to rank alongside GDP in an attempt to force us to cheer up.
Policy wonks have floated the idea that the unhappiness of the wealthy (in absolute terms) derives from their comparing themselves with richer peers. As soon as comparisons stop, so does unhappiness. Sort of.
But might it be that there will always be a little corner of Britain that remains grumpy?
