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?"

Definition

• Layard defines happiness as feeling good - enjoying life and feeling it is wonderful. He defines unhappiness as feeling bad and wishing things were different. He believes that there are countless sources of happiness, and countless sources of pain and misery. But he believes that all of our experiences have a dimension which correspond to how good or bad we feel.

The fluctuation of mood

Evidence from neuro-science

The desire to feel good

The overall social outcome

Trends in happiness

Comparing happiness across countries

Trends in depression and crime

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]]