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Some argue that school is a means to an end, and time spent in lessons may be unpleasant, but it helps these children in the future. The question is 'to what end'. Are school years something which have to be tolerated i...Read more...
Sara MacLennan
13 October 2025
Most people consider parks important for their quality of life, yet systematic causal evidence is missing. We exploit exogenous variations in their use values to estimate causal effects. Using a representative household ...Read more...
Jan Goebel, Christian Krekel and Katrin Rehdanz
2 June 2025
How can we get the different sectors of society to collaborate to overcome the challenges we face? The answer has to be "Get them to address a common goal"....Read more...
Richard Layard
5 November 2024
This issue of the World Happiness Report focuses on the happiness of people at different stages of life. In the seven ages of man in Shakespeare's As You Like It, the later stages of life are portrayed as deeply depressi...Read more...
Edited by Lara Aknin, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, John Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D. Sachs and Shun Wang
20 March 2024
What can leaders do to calm workplace anxieties and get the best out of their teams in 2024? Jazzy Jasiulek, Daniel Jolles, Nikita, and Grace Lordan asked over 1,400 professionals about their top anxieties and share how ...Read more...
Jazzy Jasiulek, Daniel Jolles, Grace Lordan and Nikita
20 December 2023
Discussing the launch of his new podcast series 'Get Happier', Paul Dolan argues for the underrated power of checklists and mnemonics and shows how they can be applied through the medium of podcasting....Read more...
Paul Dolan
7 November 2023
It has been over ten years since the first World Happiness Report was published. And it is exactly ten years since the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/281, proclaiming 20 March to be observed annual...Read more...
20 March 2023
The CEP carries out policy-focused research on the causes of economic growth and effective ways to create a fair, inclusive and sustainable society. The Insights series highlights the contributions that CEP research has ...Read more...
21 February 2023
Improving Access to Psychological Therapy (IAPT) services are being renamed as NHS Talking Therapies for Anxiety and Depression, following a public consultation. Professor David M Clark and Dr Adrian Whittington reflect ...Read more...
David M. Clark and Adrian Whittington
16 January 2023
Richard Layard joins Orley Ashenfelter on podcast 'The Work Goes On', to talk about his life in public service, his advocacy on behalf of the unemployed, and his pioneering research on happiness, life satisfaction, and m...Read more...
Orley Ashenfelter and Richard Layard
8 January 2023
When policy-makers have multiple objectives, they still need an over-arching criterion which determines the importance of the different objectives. The most reasonable criterion is the wellbeing of the population. Fortun...Read more...
30 August 2022
The World Happiness Report gives us an annual insight into global wellbeing. Maria Cotofan looks at what we have learned about the determinants of wellbeing in the past ten years – and what challenges and opportunities l...Read more...
Maria Cotofan
21 June 2022
As societies become richer, they do not become happier. This paradox has led to a growing interest in the science of wellbeing, and how policymakers can evaluate policies in terms of what will improve wellbeing. Economis...Read more...
14 March 2022
The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. The World Happiness Report 2020 for the first time ranks ci...Read more...
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey D. Sachs
20 May 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has led many governments to implement lockdowns. While lockdowns may help to contain the spread of the virus, they may result in substantial damage to population well-being. We use Google Trends dat...Read more...
Abel Brodeur, Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche and Nattavudh Powdthavee
19 May 2020
Studies of deprivation usually ignore mental illness. This paper uses household panel data from the USA, Australia, Britain and Germany to broaden the analysis. We ask first how many of those in the lowest levels of life...Read more...
Sarah Flèche and Richard Layard
1 February 2017
Mental illness is a far bigger source of human misery than poverty or unemployment, according to research by Sarah Flèche and Richard Layard. They argue that we need to move beyond a purely materialistic conception of mi...Read more...
22 February 2016
Mental illness (especially depression and chronic anxiety) is the biggest single cause of misery in advanced countries. But only one quarter of those who are ill receive treatment. Mental health is crucial for wellbeing ...Read more...
1 May 2015
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Richard Layard and David M. Clark
1 July 2014
This paper is a contribution to the second World Happiness Report. It makes five main points: 1. Mental health is the biggest single predictor of life-satisfaction. This is so in the UK, Germany and Australia even if men...Read more...
Dan Chisholm, Richard Layard, Vikram Patel and Shekhar Saxena
16 September 2013
Background: The English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) initiative aims to make evidence-based psychological therapies for depression and anxiety disorder more widely available in the National Health S...Read more...
David M. Clark, Alex Gyani, Richard Layard and Roz Shafran
4 July 2013
This lecture argues that mental health is a major factor of production. It is the biggest single influence on life satisfaction, with mental health eight years earlier a more powerful explanatory factor than current inco...Read more...
10 May 2013
Mental illness accounts for a massive share of the total burden of disease. Even when we include the burden of premature death mental illness accounts for 23% of the total burden of disease. Yet, despite the existence of...Read more...
18 June 2012
Francesca Cornaglia and Andrew Leigh measure the impact of crime - and media reporting of crime - on the mental wellbeing of both victims and non-victims...Read more...
Francesca Cornaglia and Andrew Leigh
16 February 2012
The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme is a large-scale initiative that aims to greatly increase the availability of NICE recommended psychological treatment for depression and anxiety disorders...Read more...
David M. Clark
25 August 2011
