RICHARD LAYARD AND GUS O’DONNELL
Build back wellbeing and you will truly level everyone up
The prime minister’s top post-Covid new year’s resolutions are probably “build back better” and “level up”. But what constitutes better, and what should we actually level up? We believe a better world would be one in which people were more satisfied with their lives — in which they felt more worthwhile and happier. And levelling up would mean helping those who were most unhappy to lead more fulfilling lives. All this needs to be done in a sustainable way appropriate for the country hosting the next global climate change conference.
In a word, Boris Johnson’s aim should be the wellbeing of the people, now and to come. This shift of aim would make a huge difference to his policy priorities. He would focus more on what matters most to people — their mental health and physical health, their children, their family stability, their work and community life and food on the table. These are the social capital in our lives, and they affect our happiness much more than the physical infrastructure around us.
So building back better should not be mainly about roads, railways and buildings. It should be about spending more on mental health, child wellbeing, skills, youth services, family support and care of the elderly. And, of course, combating climate change, which will destroy the wellbeing of future generations.
These arguments are not just hunches. They are based on decades of serious research about what matters most to people, and about how their lives can be improved at least cost to the exchequer. People vary hugely in their satisfaction with their lives, and this is the fundamental inequality that calls for “levelling up”. Research shows that surprisingly little of the variation in wellbeing is due to economic inequality. Very much more is related to the huge variation in mental and physical health, and in the quality of relationships at home, at work and in the community.
Fortunately, there are effective ways in which we can help with these problems, and they are not hugely expensive compared with large capital projects. For example, 50% of people with crippling depression or anxiety disorders will recover with a course of modern psychological therapy costing about £1,000. This is the kind of area where extra spending should go.
Or take schools. If you want to predict if a child will become a happy adult, the best predictor is not their qualifications but their emotional health. Small amounts of money could transform the development of child wellbeing in schools, but plans to introduce mental health support workers to schools still cover only a third of the country. Most expenditure on mental wellbeing pays for itself by cutting the numbers on disability benefits, reducing crime and raising productivity. And Covid has yet again revealed its critical importance.
Many examples of the huge shift in priorities we need were given in an excellent report by the all-party parliamentary group on wellbeing economics. And the mechanism to make the change is already in place. For the government’s spending priorities are meant to be evaluated using the Treasury’s green book. This already says that the objective is “social wellbeing”.
It is hugely in the government’s interest to make this shift. For powerful new research shows that re-election depends more on the wellbeing of the people than on income or jobs. Both the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the EU now call on member countries to “put people and their wellbeing at the centre of policy design”. Three countries do this explicitly — New Zealand, Scotland and Iceland. They are all small countries led by women. Now is the time for a large country led by a man to follow suit.
Professor Lord Layard is co-author of Can We Be Happier? (Penguin, 2020) and professor of economics at the London School of Economics. Lord O’Donnell is a former cabinet secretary and chairman of Frontier Economics
No comments:
Post a Comment