The Origins of Happiness

Relationships Between Youth Sports Participation and Mental Health in Young Adulthood Among Finnish Males

“…1,2 According to estimations from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, around 5% of the working-age population has a severe mental health condition and a further 15% is affected by a more common mental health condition causing significant socioeconomic cost. 3 The authors of the World Happiness Report 4 found that mental illness was the strongest predictor of misery in 3 rich countries, even stronger than poverty. However, mental health is more than the absence of mental disorder.…”

Taking a wellbeing years approach to policy choice

“…When a person becomes unemployed, their wellbeing drops by 0.7 points. A person diagnosed with depression and anxiety has, on average, 0.7 points lower life satisfaction 4. There are now tables of coefficients that analysts can use for looking at the wellbeing effects of a whole range of outcomes 5.…”

Well-Being and Pluralism

“…In this way it lets people define their well-being however they prefer, incorporating whatever considerations they think are relevant. 1 When attempting to justify this construct, researchers appeal to its simplicity and democratic nature (Diener et al 2009 , p. 47; Layard 2012 ; Clark et al 2018 , p. 4). Life satisfaction is also psychologically accessible: when people are asked how satisfied they are with their life as a whole they have no trouble answering this question (Frijters et al 2019 ).…”

“…Graham's vision has been taken up by numerous psychologists and economists. The Origins of Happiness —a recent book authored by a team of economists who represent the Wellbeing Programme of the LSE's Centre for Economic Performance—is a case in point (Clark et al 2018 ). The authors defend a single, purely quantitative methodology, using data from various national and international panel datasets to make fairly precise inferences (and even causal inferences) about how much a given set of social, demographic, and economic circumstances boosts or impedes life satisfaction.…”

“…As we already mentioned, life satisfaction does not track emotional well-being, can be vulnerable to context effects, and makes implausible psychological assumptions about judgement and perception. Its defenders also claim that it is the most democratic and liberal measure, allowing people to fill in their own values, rather than using the values of the researchers who, if using multiple indicators, have to exercise a value judgment when deciding how to weigh them (Clark et al 2018 ; Layard 2019 ). But this is a very limited sense of ‘democratic’, since when people are asked to rate their life satisfaction there is no genuine conversation of what well-being means to them and there is no option for the subjects to reject the very idea that life is a good with which one can be satisfied or dissatisfied as with a product.…”