It was probably without too much thought that you raised your glass at midnight on Monday and beseeched friends to have a happy new year. But a moment's reflection reveals that this is one resolution which even iron wills cannot reliably be held to. For one thing, the role of luck is too overpowering to ignore. A literal slip, for example, can land a nasty injury of a sort that can undo any promise to look on the bright side. More fundamentally, there are simply too many metaphorical slips which one can make in the gap between the pursuit and the achievement of happiness.

With more run-of-the-mill objects of desire, from promotions to marathon finishing lines, there is much to be said for the view that where there's a will, there's a way. But we all want to feel good, and yet yearning for this will not bring it about – striving for a smile can even retard the prospect, by setting one into a self-absorbed spin. But if introspective deduction provides no useful guidance on the conquest of happiness, the fast-developing science of wellbeing is distilling some valuable lessons through inductive mass observation.

Money can't buy you love, nor does it turn out to buy much extra cheer in the world's richer societies. Inspired by that finding, David Cameron has followed the lead of the king of Bhutan and established official measures of wellbeing, so that this can be targeted alongside traditional GDP metrics, as it has been in the Himalayan statelet since the 1970s. If money doesn't matter, the things that do make the difference are company, community and – above all – a sense of purpose. Thus it is, for example, that a new study in the British Journal of Psychiatry suggests that those who successfully quit smoking for 2013 can expect to become significantly less anxious: the immediate calming draw of a cigarette for the addicted would appear to be overwhelmed by the empowering wellbeing that comes with the feeling of having kicked the habit.

In the face of a stubborn financial depression, one might have thought it would be a great relief to discover that joy stems from non-material roots – it at least creates the possibility that the human heart might flourish through austere times. Sadly, unemployment provides a nasty eudaemonic twist to every economic downturn – the hardships of a squeezed pay packet might be endured with a smile, but the futility of getting up in the morning without something productive to do cannot be shrugged off. The Prince's Trust today published research that revealed an enormous hit to confidence about every aspect of life faced by young people who are stuck without work or college. A return to growth will not guarantee happiness, but in its absence we will likely remain stuck with joblessness – which guarantees the opposite.