The Happy Science?

I've just picked up Happiness : Lessons from a New Science by Richard Layard, economist, policy adviser and member of the House of Lords.  He is now described in the book's blurb as a leading figure in the new field of "happiness studies" and it goes on:

this revolutionary work addressing the elusive concept of happiness and how we can have more of it. Based on sophisticated, cutting-edge scientific research, Happiness integrates insights gleaned from psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and applied economics to draw surprising conclusions about the true causes of happiness and the means we have to effect it. (Hint: It probably isn’t wealth or fame.)

Layard strives to show that capitalism’s emphasis on individualism and competition has helped to diminish the feeling of a common good among people of different classes and societies.  Layard isn't the only professor of the dismal science to re-evaluate the fundamental goal of economic policy (see this among others). As one contributor to the Poverty and Growth blog of the World Bank puts it "[f]rom 1950s to now, this measurement of economic performance has been steadily changing from monetary to non-monetary aspects -- increasing per capita incomes, to broad-based GDP growth, to human development, to sustainable environment, gender equity, development as freedom and empowerment, poverty reduction, equity in opportunities, and more recently, to happiness".

A very insightful book that I read last year deals with similar themes.  Richard Wilkinson, an epidemiologist who is also well read in the social science literature, looks at patterns of health in wealthy societies in order to discover why poor health persists alongside unprecedented levels of material prosperity.  His book, The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier, shows how inequality affects social relations and well-being. In wealthy countries, health is not simply a matter of material circumstances and access to health care; it is also how relationships and social standing make one feel about life.  So we now have well-grounded medical arguments for taking equality seriously.  I'm hoping that Layard's book can offer similar prescriptive insights. 

Comments

[wulfbeorn]

I might check out the book but I would definitely disagree with the idea that a government's goal should be to bring about "feelings of common good" among people, nor do I see how they would even be capable of that.

We see what happens in countries like France that go down the socialist road and it's not pretty.

[Simon]

Doesn't most of these Happiness surveys show probably the most capitalist country and inequal in Europe is the happiest i.e. Ireland. Or is there just an Irish tendancy to either a. Be happy b. say I am happy to foreigners taking surveys

I am being to think about inequality again along these lines. Why Inequality is bad is not so much about people having the nessities of life but the fact that others get more. Jealously in effect. Hence why an unequal society has more robbery. Maybe I am wrong it is a thought steam in progress.