Layard's Lectures

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Richard Layard's Lectures (Happiness: Has Social Science a Clue?)

1st Lecture: "What is happiness? Are we getting happier?"

To understand how the economy actually affects our well-being, we have to use psychology as well as economics. In the last 20 years psychologists have been studying feelings in great depth - measuring them, comparing them across people, and explaining them.

1st lecture: [1]

2nd Lecture: "Income and happiness: rethinking economic policy."

2nd lecture: [2]

3rd Lecture: "How can we make a happier society?"

In this lecture, Layard focuses on 7 main factors that are affected by happiness

1. Income
   • If a society's income as a whole falls, individuals will not be impacted because every one in the community suffers.
2. Work
   • Unemployment is a disaster
     • Trying to keep low unemployment should be a goal for governments
     • In most instances, having any job is better than none
     • Welfare-to-work should be implemented
   • job-security
     • if people have secure jobs, they tend to be happier
     • governments should provide reasonable job security to members of the community
     • pace of work also impacts workers because the pressure for them to reach certain targets. This pressure leads to stress
     • Although everyone does not have the same preferences, everyone wants job security
3. Private Life
   • geographical mobility
     • economists favor geographical mobility but there are some problems with people always moving
     • increases family break up and criminality
   • growing up and staying in the same community creates closer ties amoung individuals. Individuals in these communities are more trustworthy
   • individuals that move around a lot sometimes become less bonded to others
4. Health
   • mental health is very important to happiness
     • mental disorders lead to unhappiness such as depression
5. Community
   • Happiness is not only affected by how you treat yourself but how you treat others as well
   • how you perceive others is important too
   • issue of trust
     • people are happier if they can trust others
6. Philosophy of life
   • over the years there has been a decline in religious belief
   • an individual can obtain happiness from not being self interested but rather from the good fortune of others
7. Freedom
   • Communist governments were not well received by the people which caused unhappiness
   • post-Communism countries, such as Hungary, are much happier with their government

3rd lecture: [3]

These lectures were accessed through the London School of Economics and Political Science website, at http://www.lse.ac.uk/.

Happiness studies main page: [[4]]