Press coverage and releases

The London School of Economics’ Prof Richard Layard, labour economist and co-editor of the annual world happiness report, says: “We are the only country where happiness has not recovered since Covid.”

January 2024

New Statesman - Westminster Reimagined with Armando Iannucci

How much value do we put on happiness in Britain?

Link to podcast

Sunday 31 December 2023

Guardian - Labour should make UK leader in wellbeing-informed policy

Call by economics of happiness expert Richard Layard comes as research agency set up under David Cameron is to be axed in Whitehall cuts.

December 2023

New Statesman - Happiness could be Labour’s secret election weapon

The economist Richard Layard advises politicians to take well-being more seriously.

Thursday 26 October 2023

FT - Rationing access to apprenticeships is increasing the UK’s skills deficit

Places for vocational training should be funded in the same way as degrees and match demand from young learners

Thursday 6 July 2023

New Statesman - not everyone goes to university

Richard Layard argues that focusing on university tuition fees neglects half of young people – and past successes with apprenticeships.

Tuesday 7 March 2023

FT - Make wellbeing central to public policy

Richard Layard explains the benefits of making wellbeing a core public policy.

Wednesday 21 September 2022

Richard Layard Recognised as a Clarivate Citation Laureate 2022

Professor Richard Layard has been honoured for his “pioneering contributions to the economics of happiness and subjective wellbeing” by information company Clarivate.

Professor Lord Layard, co-director of the community wellbeing programme and former director of the Centre for Economic Performance, was named alongside fellow wellbeing researchers Richard Easterlin, university professor emeritus of economics, University of Southern California, and Andrew Oswald, professor of economics and behavioural science, Warwick University.

The Citation Laureate award recognises individuals whose research publications are highly cited within the Web of Science™ database, which is owned by Clarivate.

Of the 396 world-class researchers recognised as citation laureates in the past 20 years, 64 have gone on to receive a Nobel Prize.

Professor Layard said: “Researchers should be thinking in terms of how they can make the world a better place. When they’ve got an insight, they need to be revealing it in a proactive way to people who can implement it – policymakers, leading business figures, leading figures in the educational world, wherever it is.”

Wednesday 6 July 2022

CITP Blog - Inclusion and Wellbeing

Our team at LSE recently analysed the findings from major longitudinal surveys in Britain, Germany, Australia and the US.1 The findings were similar in all these countries, and Figure 1 gives the results of a cross-sectional multiple regression equation for Britain...

Monday 4 July 2022

Press Release - Make Wellbeing the Goal: A Wellbeing Manifesto

Four senior economists (Richard Layard, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Carol Graham and Gus O'Donnell) have issued a Manifesto for Wellbeing. They urge that people’s wellbeing should be the ultimate goal for governments, for business and for schools: “let’s put wellbeing first”.

To politicians they point out that voting in a general election is determined more by people’s wellbeing than by their economic situation. So Finance Ministers should insist that public money only goes to those policies which give the highest wellbeing bang for the buck...