Customer Reviews

Happiness: Lessons from a New Science

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Richard Layard's book has two parts: (1) The Problem (Why People aren't happier even though income is way up), plus lots of good studies on the subject, and (2) What can be done (To make us happier than we are).

The first part is loaded with great information coming from research studies--what time of day most of us are the happiest, which countries are happiest, the role genes play in happiness, what activities make us happy, how stable happiness has been in the U.S. over time, how jealousy of the income of our peers has on our happiness, and why Jeremy Bentham's concept of maximizing the most happiness for the most people should be the basis for personal and governmental decisions. So far, so good. I totally agree, and found the reading very worth while and educational.
Part two--how to solve the problem of stable instead of rising happiness--is where the book gets into big trouble. Not only does Layard not come up with any down to earth specific suggestions, but he often uses gobbledigook to explain murky solutions. Example: "A society cannot flourish without some sense of shared purpose. The current pursuit of self-realisation will not work...." What exactly this means in concrete ideas, he doesn't make clear--at least, to me. He has oversimplified obvious ideas with no great plans on how to implement them. Example: Unemployment causes unhappiness--so, we need to reduce unemploymnent. Duh!
In other words, Layard appears to be an economist who wants the government to reduce our stress. Since when has the government reduced our stress? That's what I want to know.
If you look at most advanced countries trailing the U.S. in happiness, they include France and Germany, two countries which give their people cradle to grave medical care and enough vacation time to put any U.S. citizen into extasy. Yet France and Germany trail the U.S.A. by several percentage points in happiness.
Layard leaves out possibly the most important factor in determining the happiness of the people in a given country--economic freedom. [...] Those with the least economic freedom trail behind.
If the reader wants tips on how to improve his or her personal happiness, I suggest reading Authentic Happiness by Seligman. Having said all this, there is so much great information on the subject of happiness in this book I found it well worth reading and I'm glad I bought it. Just don't expect any great ideas on how to solve the problem.
I still do agree with Layard that legislation and government policy should be concerned with the happiness of the people effected by it. And, each government should do its best to measure the happiness of its citizens. Whether a given policy will increase or decrease happiness--now that's not so easy to predict.
One gets the feeling that Layard is using his research on happiness to bolster his views on economics. Whether they do is highly debatable.

It can sometimes be incredibly helpful for an "outsider" to have a look at a problem. So it proves in this excellent book by Lord Richard Layard, a former Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, and now an active member of the British House of Lords.

What can an economist tell us about the science and the art of happiness? The answer is a great deal. In 2004 Layard wrote a report - that is available online - in which he pointed out that despite the advances in the economy and in the provision of healthcare, we are no happier than we were fifty years ago. He went on to say that psychological problems and mental illness are amongst the biggest causes of misery. At a time when political action only seems to happen when we can attach a dollar cost and potential savings, he added that human suffering imposes severe burdens on the economy. At the same time we already have good evidence that the tools for dealing with all this psychological distress already exist. In his report he went on to propose that the United Kingdom needs 10,000 new cognitive behavioral therapists to make a major dent in all this suffering. What was different was that he went on to show that this expenditure made good economic sense.

The book is broken into two parts. The first is an excellent review of the factors involved in happiness, as well as a foray into the work of the English Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who believed that personal and societal decisions should all be based on the idea of creating the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. In the second part Layard discusses his report and his prescriptions for action. One weakness of the book is that it does not stand well on its own. His action plan is easier to understand if you have read the report. (I cannot include the website address in this review, but if you look for Layard's name and "Prime Minister's Strategy Unit," you will quickly find it online.)

This is not in any way a book about how to create more personal happiness. It is instead an interesting attempt to draw up the bare bones of a strategy for increasing the happiness quotient of a country. It rather begs the questions about whether the creation of happiness is a legitimate concern of government. Not long ago there were news reports of one Asian country in which moves were afoot to make happiness not just a right but also a duty!

Nobody wants to pathologize ordinary life, and few would claim that cognitive behavior therapy is the only way to help people in trouble. But the fact that a powerful economist and advisor to the British Government has seen not just the human cost of unhappiness, but also added the dollars and cents that may lead to action is remarkable.

Richard Layard provides an excellent review of recent research on what determines human happiness. He interprets this in light of his own committment to a utilitarian philosophy, but most of the research findings he reviews, and the policy conclusions he reaches, should be relevant to readers of a variety of philosophical and religious persuasions. For example, page 64 of the book has a facinating table, attributed to research by John Helliwell, which reports that being divorced, rather than married, has about two-and-a-half times the depressing effect on happiness of losing one-third of your family income. Being unemployed, rather than employed, has about three times the depressing effect of a one-third loss in family income. Even if you are employed, if the general unemployment rate goes up by 10 points, this reduces happiness more than a one-third drop in family income. All of these effects consider a change in one factor, holding all other factors constant. These findings are surprising and important to take into account. They are important to take into account even if you reject the claim of utilitarianism that human happiness should be the be-all and end-all of philosophy and social policy.

I should note that Layard is a very well-regarded British economist who has done important work on unemployment issues and benefit-cost analysis of public policies.

I suspect that this may be the only book by an economist that discusses how the Buddhist meditation techniques taught by Jon Kabat-Zinn (for example in his book Wherever You Go, There You Are) affect human happiness in a controlled experiment. It turns out that the "treatment group", which meditated for eight weeks, compared to the control group, which did not do so, when interviewed 4 months after the eight week treatment, were happier by 20 percentile points. This is a very large effect.

Happiness as a cornerstone of public policy? Happiness as a determining factor in economic decisions? Whose happiness, yours, mine? Well, yes, and ours. Richard Layard makes a convincing and in my opinion long overdue argument for making happiness a benchmark in our policy decisions, both public and private.

This isn't just a pie-in-the-sky whimsical new age thought. Mr. Layard reasons from definable, measurable, empirical data. He's an economist after all. Having said that you might think this is a dense, gross-national-product-per-capita kind of tome. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Mr. Layard's style is conversational and easily accessible. It's slyly thought provoking. The footnotes and reference sections will enable anyone looking for more data to be even happier.

I'm happy I read this book. I recommend it to everyone who is ready for a new look on the dismal science.

This is the book I've been looking for. A noted economist and member of the British House of Lords starts his book with the central premise--how do we create public policies which will increase human happiness and well-being?-and explores the subject from a variety of disciplines. Layard's findings make clear how the Anglo-American policies of the last 30 years have worked to undermine well-being while European social democratic policies are working far better. Most powerful is Layard's assessment of how low taxes actually lead to time poverty and overwork, with tremendous negative impacts for families, friendships, community, health, and other key factors that are the most important underpinnings of happiness. This book makes it clear why consumer society undermines our well-being and must be tamed. We need to begin trading productivity increases for time instead of money and stuff if we are to build a happier, fairer world. All that's missing is the ecological sustainability argument, but it would only further bolster Layard's point of view since our consumer society is clearly ecologically destructive as well. This book should be must-reading for policy makers. It clearly demolishes the arguments of right-wingers who want more tax cutting, etc. After reading it, one should recognize immediately the non-sense at the foundation of the rightwing (especially of the Ayn Rand libertartian variety)agenda. This is the book progressives need to make the case for social democracy and economic justice. Well done, Dr. Layard!!!

If you're seeking a brief, readable book that discusses what contemporary psychology and biology has to say about happiness, you would do well to pass over Layard and pick up Daniel Nettle's Happiness: The Science Behind your Smile. They cover similar territory, but Nettle packs more information into fewer pages and conveys it with far greater precision.

An unsettling paradox: over fifty years of marked progress yet we are not any happier...

Why does a leading economist write a book about `soft stuff' such as happiness? Even more puzzling: why does he title the book "Happiness. Lessons from a new science"? Richard Layard is the founder of a relevant economics research center within the London School of Economics, author of several academic books on topics such as unemployment and inequality. This latest effort of his is truly ground braking and starts from a simple observation: "There is a paradox at the heart of our lives. Most people want more income and strive for it. Yet as Western societies have got richer, their people have become not happier. This is no old wives' tale. It is a fact proven by many pieces of scientific research. As I'll show, we have good ways to measure how happy people are, and all the evidence says that on average people are no happier today than people were fifty years ago. Yet at the same time average incomes have more than doubled. This paradox is equally true for the United States and Britain and Japan". Layard in this book tries to go to the roots of this paradox and in the process makes a strong case for learning how to use the `science of happiness' in our daily lives while supporting the argument to raise this science to the level of public political debate and action.

The seven factors that influence happiness

Layard points out seven factors that are key to the perception of happiness. They are (listed in order of relevance) 1) family relationships; 2) financial situation; 3) work; 4) community and friends; 5) health. The two additional factors influence all of the first four and are equally relevant: a) personal freedom; b) personal values. The description of these factors articulates some interesting conclusions that may appear as part of `common sense', yet now they are `certified' by official scientific method and research. Here some of them: we are happier when we manage not to be totally self absorbed and we actively manifest an interest towards other people well being; work does not provide us simply with material means to survive, it gives us an intrinsic sense of meaning and satisfaction that has a strong influence on our perception of happiness; the way that we `frame' our daily reality has a strong impact on our perception of happiness; happiness is fundamentally and individualistic value, yet as human beings we have a moral sense that brings us to value other people perceptions of happiness. Layard leverages upon this last assertion in order to stress the importance of beginning to consider happiness as a way to measure the real progress and development of a collectivity (being either a community, a nation or a continent).

Measuring happiness to understand the real progress and development... OK! Are economist out or their league?...

One of the key chapters of the book is about this thought. Layard states that for a long time the development of a nation has been measured in terms of Gross National Product (GNP) and certainly happiness is not a monitored factor. Quite interestingly it was not always this way: during the 19th century most of the British economists considered happiness, collective happiness, as a measure of the real development of a nation. These economist saw happiness as a measurable factor and thought that an increase in material wealth brought a progressively decreasing perception of happiness. Unfortunately during the 1930s behavioral science (James, Pavlov, Skinner) conquered center stage discarding the relevance of `inner' feelings: concrete numeric data relevant to observable and measurable behavior took over for good and the utilization of GNP became the key tool to measure of progress and development. This way increasing purchasing power has been considered as a display of increased progress and well being. All of this has gradually shaped a false perception of reality; just try to ask anyone if he/she considers the GNP as an actual measure of a nation well being... Layard is quite effective in developing this argument and articulating the need for a `new economic science': a science capable of integrating psychological and sociological factors to the current one dimensional focus on numbers in order to properly represent the reality perceived by the people. Unfortunately this one dimensional focus is currently the one many public policies are based upon.

When economics starts to focus also on the mind and not simply on `economic behavior'...

When this happens, the work of economics becomes much more difficult: no longer monitoring the `economic behavior' is enough to understand the well being of an individual or a collectivity, we need to go much deeper into aspects such as values (in a psychological and spiritual sense, not the material one), perceptions, psychological and sociological impacts of social changes, mental health and so forth. Layard articulates a very interesting overview of the topic writing about the roots, dynamics and effects of Buddhism, positive psychology and cognitive psychology in order to increase our sense of inner awareness. An awareness that too often is overshadowed by exterior and material aspects. For example, he points out that in the Western world depression has a very relevant impact at the social and productive level; yet only about one fifth of people with depression choose actively to cure it. Only physical illnesses take center stage. Layard reflections lead us to realize that learning to "know yourself" has not `just' a philosophical or spiritual relevance, rather it is very relevant for our overall well being.

An `inner dimension' that has a strong influence not only on individual well being but also on productivity...

What happens when we are working on something that we really enjoy, something that, no matter what kind of challenge we face, makes us feel satisfied, strong, empowered? It happens that we are able to give, almost effortlessly, the very best of our talents, experience and inner resources. The psychologist Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi has been studying and articulating this phenomenon during the last fifteen years naming it `Flow'. Layard makes reference to all of this and points out its value in terms not only of individual well being but also productivity, a kind of value that traditional economics totally neglects and, I add, not only economics but unfortunately also most part of management `science' and `talk' neglect it! (by the way, I strongly recommend the book "Flow. The psychology of Optimal Experience"). The author openly invites all of us to pay more attention to all of these `inner aspects' and their relevance to the economic dimension. He also notes that the educational system has often marked responsibilities... for example in Britain the concept of "getting ahead" is the official core motivator of learning; he observes that this contributes to missing the point of learning and expressing the own talents: beginning with the educational system we should start to emphasize that satisfaction does not come from simply "getting ahead", rather from doing something well expressing the very best of ourselves. This way the qualitative aspect of making (inclusive of the quality of our perceptions while `we make') increases its value respect to the quantitative one; all of this almost appears rhetorical, but actually if this kind of `rhetoric' would become integral part of our learning and doing we would have a revolution in the making!

So what? So we can fuel this revolution beginning with ourselves!...

Happiness as a `tool' to measure individual and collective progress, development and well being, all of these factors made to sum up a stronger utilization of our potential... This is (it would be) a real revolution. A revolution not simply based upon philosophical or ethical aspects, rather based upon a pragmatic interaction with the real world: an interaction not oversimplified by statistics, numbers or traditional economic data (and this book effectively introduces us to this kind of perspective).

Do we want to try to fuel this revolution beginning with our work places? Here a pointer to start: when we select new hires or we interact with our colleagues to give and take feedback, let's try to ask this `simple' question: "what does make you happy?" . Please, let's not accept `granted' answers related to the `Gross National Product' mind set... let's not even fall into the false assumption that by asking that question "we will fuel unreachable expectations". In fact, let `s not forget that the perception of happiness is strongly linked to the way we `frame' a situation, therefore if we don't learn to understand our way of `framing' and other people way of `framing', we will never be able to fully utilize tools and strategies that can have a real daily positive impact on us and on the people close to us.

Unless you're very poor or something is wrong with your genes or something very traumatic happens to you. The author of this book, an economist by training, tries to go beyond measures of material well-being, in order to answer some questions: How can one define happiness? Can it be measured? Are we happier than before? What can we do to be happier? The central point, of course, is to find out if happiness can be measured. Turns out it can. Well-devised polls, as well as graphicable evaluations of cerebral activity, allow us to know the degree of happiness people experience. Science is making progress on this field. A first result is revealing and maybe alarming: we are no more happy than 50 years ago. But certainly we are richer (well, Layard excludes people living in severe poverty, as studies have shown that this condition is not conducive to happiness). So there's a first conclusion, coherent with any soap-opera or romantic comedy: the accumulation of riches entails decreasing marginal returns. That is, moving from a trailer park to your first real house dramatically increases your levels of happiness, but changing your old Rolex for a new one will not have any impact, or in any case it will last too little. Or, wealth does not necessarily bring happiness, but poverty (and especially the perception of one's own poverty) does bring unhappiness. What then, beyond a certain level of wealth, can cause happiness? Several things, in complex mixes.

Chronologically, genes come in the first place. If you are severely handicapped, or suffer from bipolarity and/or chronic depression, happiness will be elusive. Second, the way you are brought up: the love you receive, the sense of equilibrium in family life, the values you are taught, etc. Then come: stability (financial, social, emotional), intellectual stimulus, and the acceptance of your situation in life, which does not mean apathy nor implies bland conformity, and which may include ambition, but that is basically a mental state oblivious of anxiety about status and permanent comparison with other people who "do better", or the absence of envy.

Sounds a bit old, doesn't it? Science has gone on confirming what ancient knowledge intuitively perceived. Having a stable love life, sharing with family and friends, a stimulating job which allows for free time, a decent income, intellectual interests, are the key to some good measure of inner peace and so happiness. Not that it's easy to get all that, but it is possible if you are conscious that bad things will happen from time to time.

Another debate that is present in the book is: What can the political arena do to promote happiness? Something very important: eliminate or minimize sources of unhappiness, such as extreme poverty, crime, brutal inequality, etc. Confirming old sayings and all, this is a good pointer.

As a non-American it is astonishing to read the distortions of Layard's argument presented in several of the reviews of this book, distortions suggesting that many Americans view any innovative thoughts on government policy and taxation as "communism". Layard shows that unfettered economic growth and scientific change has led to not just rising incomes but to social breakdown in the form of increased divorce rates, crime and alcoholism. These things make people unhappy!! Poor mental health makes people more unhappy than just about anything.Critics of this book should themselves attempt to answer the question, why, above a certain level, do rising incomes not increase happiness rather than rant on about its "communistic" ideas.

There are very few subjects left that are interesting enough to read about. This is one of them.

The reason for this is that the vast majority of the sciences exhibit a routine advancement that borders on the banal. They have become boring.

The one science that is of primary importance and still unsettled is how the self organizing forces of man can be controlled to produce the best possible society. Nothing is more important in the affairs of man than how he structures his society.

There is enough variation in the world that Lord Richard Layard has been able to use the available data to draw some compelling conclusions.

If the interplay of economics, social policy and psychology interests you and you are interested in how this interplay can be used to build the best possible society you should BUY THIS BOOK.

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