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Introduction to the Happiness Revolution
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The Economics of Happiness
In this course, Professor Lord Richard Layard (London School of Economics) looks at the economics of happiness. In the first module, we introduce the key ideas of happiness economics and discuss how the happiness revolution has taken shape so far. Then, we look at how we measure happiness and how happiness is distributed both internationally and domestically. After this, we look at how income affects happiness. In the fourth module, we explore the relationship between adolescence, mental health and happiness. Finally, we look at the relationship between the environment, public policy and happiness.
Introduction to the Happiness Revolution
In this module, we introduce the key ideas of happiness economics and discuss how the happiness revolution has taken shape so far. In particular, we will focus on: (i) why happiness is important; (ii) how the science of happiness has made it possible to measure happiness; (iii) why income isn’t everything in economics; and (iv) how priorities have changed over the last 10 years.
Hello. I'm Richard Layard.
00:00:05I'm a professor of economics at the London School of Economics.
00:00:08And I'm going to be talking about the economics
00:00:12of happiness.
00:00:16That may seem a bit surprising. So let me start by asking you a question to reflect on
00:00:17supposing you hadn't yet been born
00:00:24and you can choose which country you are going to be born in.
00:00:26And so there are two countries, country one.
00:00:30People are very happy enjoying their lives, satisfied with their lives.
00:00:33But they're not very rich country to people are very rich,
00:00:38but they're not enjoying their lives.
00:00:44They're not satisfied with their lives.
00:00:46Which of those two countries would you rather be born in?
00:00:50Well, if your answer is you want to be born in the first country.
00:00:53You are part of a great tradition
00:00:57going back to the 18th century
00:01:00enlightenment
00:01:02where people first developed the idea that how would you judge the situation?
00:01:05How do you measure progress?
00:01:09How do you know whether one policy is better than another?
00:01:11You always look at the happiness
00:01:14that results
00:01:17in that situation.
00:01:19You look at it, of course, across all the people who are affected.
00:01:21So the idea is
00:01:26that the good society
00:01:28is the one which produces
00:01:31the most overall happiness. I think it's an incredibly important idea.
00:01:33Perhaps it's the most powerful idea of modern times.
00:01:37It certainly lead to a great deal of social reform.
00:01:41But
00:01:45it wasn't easy to apply it
00:01:46in a quantitative or rigorous way
00:01:48until quite recently, because there wasn't the science of happiness.
00:01:51It wasn't possible to measure happiness.
00:01:56And so actually what happened was that people
00:01:59fell back on something they could measure,
00:02:02which was income.
00:02:04And so we've got this situation now where a major goal,
00:02:06if not the major goal
00:02:11of most governments, has been
00:02:13to maximise economic growth
00:02:16every month or so in the newspapers,
00:02:19you see comparisons of who's doing better than who is growing faster.
00:02:22Who's written who.
00:02:26This has become
00:02:28the totem
00:02:30of success.
00:02:31And yet aren't we concerned about something wider?
00:02:33What affects how we feel about our lives
00:02:36as a whole,
00:02:39which is, as you'll see as we go on?
00:02:40Certainly not just our incomes.
00:02:43So what has changed recently? One thing which has changed is that we've got
00:02:48the science
00:02:54of happiness.
00:02:54We actually can look at things in terms of their impact on happiness.
00:02:56The other thing that has changed is people have
00:03:00had pretty much growth over a 50 year period,
00:03:03let's say,
00:03:08and yet they're finding
00:03:09they're not that much happier.
00:03:11In fact,
00:03:13if you
00:03:14look at the surveys which have been done across the world,
00:03:15you will see that over the last 20 years
00:03:19there's been an increase
00:03:22of stress
00:03:24in every reason of the world.
00:03:25That seems a bit odd. You would have thought, as we're getting richer,
00:03:28we could afford to enjoy life a bit more. And yet for some reason, which will come to
00:03:32that actually
00:03:38increasing stress, which has led people to question this overall idea,
00:03:39that it should be growth, which we want more than anything.
00:03:47And so there's a sort of movement which started being called beyond growth.
00:03:53But I think it's best called the Happiness Revolution, the Happiness movement.
00:03:58This is a movement of people who say when we're thinking about how
00:04:02we want to live ourselves or how we want governments to behave,
00:04:07we want them to focus on what impact it has on our overall happiness
00:04:11and
00:04:16not just our income.
00:04:17Here's a bit of evidence of the change, uh, in
00:04:20priorities
00:04:25in the population as a whole. So Google books produce an index of word frequency
00:04:26in published material,
00:04:33and in this graph you can see
00:04:36that
00:04:39there has been an absolute surge,
00:04:40an interest
00:04:42in happiness.
00:04:44Over that period. It's doubled,
00:04:45whereas over the last 2010 years you'll see that the interest
00:04:48in GDP or other national income measures has been going down.
00:04:53I think that's a very healthy trend.
00:05:01That's the reason why we're discussing this now.
00:05:03At the governmental level,
00:05:08there is also a great change in interest.
00:05:10So there are about five governments that now have what they call wellbeing budgets.
00:05:14Uh, the A c D the club of rich nations in Paris, um,
00:05:18is urging its members to make wellbeing.
00:05:23That's the word they use for happiness.
00:05:27Well, being the goal, there are, uh, papers coming from the European Union
00:05:28that say that also should be the goal
00:05:36in Britain. Uh, this is 2022. The leader of the opposition
00:05:40is saying that he will require, if he comes to power,
00:05:47require the Treasury to evaluate all policy proposals in terms
00:05:52of their impact on well being as well as income.
00:05:57So this is becoming a real issue for the making of policy.
00:06:01And I think it's a really important moment in
00:06:06human history where we are rethinking our ultimate objectives.
00:06:10So I think it's a moment for individuals
00:06:17you can rethink their objectives in the light of the evidence
00:06:21of what actually makes a real difference to our lives.
00:06:24And it's also an opportunity
00:06:28for governments to rethink their objectives.
00:06:30Um, I'm a member of something called the World Wellbeing Movement,
00:06:33which is trying to get governments to make the happiness
00:06:38of the people their target in setting all their policies.
00:06:42So let's just look at what we're going to be doing in this course.
00:06:49We've been talking already about happiness as the goal of public policy.
00:06:53The next module will be talking about how to measure happiness.
00:06:59Uh, and, uh, then how to explain?
00:07:03Uh, the levels of happiness and the distribution of happiness in the population,
00:07:06then in the third module will be focusing
00:07:15especially on income and its effect on happiness.
00:07:17In the fourth,
00:07:22one will be talking about mental health and especially the
00:07:23kind of problems that are affecting young people these days
00:07:28in terms of their happiness
00:07:33and in the last section will come to the environment and public policy
00:07:35
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Layard, R. (2022, December 06). The Economics of Happiness - Introduction to the Happiness Revolution [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/the-economics-of-happiness/introduction-to-the-happiness-revolution
MLA style
Layard, R. "The Economics of Happiness – Introduction to the Happiness Revolution." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 06 Dec 2022, https://massolit.io/courses/the-economics-of-happiness/introduction-to-the-happiness-revolution