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Financial Times:
The case for making wellbeing the goal of government policy

31 May 2019

These questions have confronted utilitarians, the most influential of whom was the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, from the beginning. But some modern-day utilitarians, foremost among them Richard Layard of the London School of Economics, argue that it is both possible to define and measure happiness, and to discover what determines it. Policy can at last do what Jefferson called for. This is the argument of an important book, The Origins of Happiness, co-authored by Prof Layard.

The Origins of Happiness, Andrew Clark, Sarah Flèche, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee and George Ward, Princeton University Press, February 2018

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