Richard Layard, Baron Layard

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The Lord Layard
Lord Layard in 2006
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
Assumed office
3 May 2000
Life Peerage
Personal details
Born
Peter Richard Grenville Layard

(1934-03-15) 15 March 1934 (age 90)
NationalityBritish
Political partyLabour
SpouseMolly, Baroness Meacher
EducationEton College
Alma mater

Peter Richard Grenville Layard, Baron Layard FBA (born 15 March 1934) is a British labour economist, co-director of the Community Wellbeing programme at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, and co-editor of the World Happiness Report.[1] Layard is an economist who wants public policy to be targeted at the wellbeing of the people. To this end he has written 6 books and some 40 articles.

His work on mental health, including publishing The Depression Report in 2006, led to the establishment of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme in England.

Family and education[edit]

Peter Richard Grenville Layard is the son of John Layard and his wife Doris. He was educated at Eton College, where he was a King's scholar; at King's College, Cambridge; and at the London School of Economics.

Work[edit]

Layard was Senior Research Officer for the Robbins Committee on Higher Education, and later developed a reputation in the economics of education (with Mark Blaug at LSE), and in labour economics (in particular with Stephen Nickell). He advocated many of the policies which characterised the New Labour government, particularly the New Deal, partly by founding the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. He supported the idea of welfare-to-work, where social welfare payments are structured in a way that encourages (or forces) recipients back into the job market.

As well as academic positions, Layard worked as an advisor for numerous organisations, including government institutions in the United Kingdom and Russia.

In 1990 he was founder-director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics where he is presently a programme director.

Happiness and wellbeing[edit]

Layard became active in the study of what has since come to be known as happiness economics. This branch of economic analysis starts from the argument that income is a bad approximation for happiness. Based on modern happiness research, Layard's early work cites three factors that economists fail to take into consideration:

  • Social comparisons: In contrast to what traditional economics predicts, happiness is derived from relative income as well as from absolute income. That is, if everyone gains purchasing power, some may still turn out unhappier if their position is worse compared to others. This effect may not turn economic growth into a zero-sum game entirely, but it will likely diminish the benefits people draw from their hard work. In an economy where not only companies, but individuals are constantly forced to compete with each other, life and work are experienced as a rat race.
  • Adaptation: As people get used to higher income levels, their idea of a sufficient income grows with their income. If they fail to anticipate that effect, they will invest more time for work than is good for their happiness.
  • Changing tastes: Economists assume that individual preferences are constant, when in fact such preferences are not fixed but increasingly mutable, shifting constantly according to the latest trends and cultural norms.

From these observations, Layard concluded that taxes serve another purpose besides paying for public services (usually for public goods) and redistributing income. The third purpose is to counteract the cognitive bias that causes people to work more than is good for their happiness. That is, taxes help citizens preserve a healthy work-life balance.

In 2005 Layard published the book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, in which he emphasised the importance of non-income variables on aggregate happiness. His book summarises the prior empirical findings produced by economists such as Richard Easterlin, David G Blanchflower, Andrew E Clark, Rafael Di Tella, Robert MacCulloch, and Andrew Oswald. In particular he stressed the role of mental health and argued that psychological treatments ought to be much more widely available.

He then turned to the whole range of influences on wellbeing as it develops over the life cycle, using longitudinal data from 4 countries. This co-authored work was published in 2014 and more fully in a book called The Origins of Happiness: The science of wellbeing over the life course (2018). It revealed, among other things, the huge impact of schools and teachers upon subsequent wellbeing, and the huge role that the independent variation of mental health plays in explaining the variance of wellbeing.

Subsequent books have included "The Good Childhood" (2009),[2] Thrive (2014)[3]Thrive (2014), Can We Be Happier?: Evidence and Ethics (2020),[4] and Wellbeing: Science and Policy (2020)[5]

In 2012 he co-edited, with Jeffrey Sachs and John Helliwell, the World Happiness Report, and remains co-editor to the present day.[1]

Layard co-founded Action for Happiness in 2010, and continues on the board.

Mental health[edit]

Layard's mental health[6] work[7] resulted in the development of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT), an initiative to improve access to psychological therapies in the United Kingdom.[8]

In 2014, with the clinical psychologist David M Clark, he published the book Thrive: The Power of Evidence-Based Psychological Therapies, in which the authors demonstrate the potential value of the wider availability of modern talking therapies, and include a chapter on mental illness prevention.[9]

Happiness and mental health[edit]

Layard has shown that mental illness[6] is the main cause of unhappiness.[10]

Development[edit]

In 2015, he was co-author of the report that launched the Global Apollo Programme, which calls for developed nations to commit to spending 0.02% of their GDP for 10 years, to fund co-ordinated research to make carbon-free baseload electricity less costly than electricity from coal by the year 2025.[11]

Critique[edit]

Recent research on happiness questioning part of Baron Layard's thesis and suggesting that people do obtain happiness from increased income[12] forms part of ongoing investigations into the Easterlin Paradox.[13]

Personal life[edit]

In 1991, he married Molly Christine Meacher, who was formerly married to Michael Meacher. Molly, styled Lady Layard between 2000 and 2006, was herself created a life peer in 2006 as Baroness Meacher. They are one of the few couples to both hold titles in their own right.

Layard has said he was strongly Christian at school, lost his faith at university, and in his later years 'has to be believe there is some purpose in the universe... which gives me comfort.'[14]

Honours[edit]

In 2003, Layard was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).[15] In 2016, he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS).[16]. In 2020, the Economic and Social Research Council recognised Richard Layard with a rare Lifetime Achievement Award to celebrate the outstanding contribution he has made to social science and society in the UK and beyond.

Selected bibliography[edit]

Books
  • Layard, Richard; Nickell, Stephen; Jackman, Richard (1991). Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market. UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198284338.
  • Layard, Richard (1999). Tackling inequality. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312215767.
  • Layard, Richard (2005). Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. London: Penguin. ISBN 9781594200397.
  • Layard, Richard; Clark, David (2014). Thrive: The Power of Evidence-Based Psychological Therapies. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 9781846146053.
  • Clark, Andrew E.; Fleche, Sarah; Layard, Richard; Nattavudh, Powdthavee; Ward, George (2018). The Origins of Happiness: The Science of Well-Being over the Life Course. Cambridge MA: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781846146053.
  • Layard, Richard; Ward, George (2020). Can We Be Happier?: Evidence and Ethics. London: Pelican. ISBN 9780241429990.
  • Layard, Richard; De Neve, Jan Emmanuel (2023). Wellbeing: Science and Policy. UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781009298940.


Arms[edit]

Coat of arms of Richard Layard, Baron Layard
Coronet
Coronet of a Baron
Crest
Out of a Ducal Coronet Or, a Mullet of six-points radiated Or, pierced Gules.
Escutcheon
Quarterly: 1st & 4th, Gules, a Chevron between in chief two Mullets of six-points radiated Or, pierced Gules, and in base a Crescent Argent, on a Chief Azure, three Mullets of six-points Or, pierced Gules (Layard); 2nd, Gules, a Cross Or, in the dexter canton a Lion rampant supporting an Anchor erect with Cable Or (Croze, anciently Croissy); 3rd, Vert, three Doves volant Argent (Balaire).

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "World Happiness Report" (PDF). Earth.columbia.edu. Retrieved 3 July 2022.
  2. ^ A good childhood: Searching for values in a competitive age. Penguin UK. 2009.
  3. ^ Thrive. Penguin UK. 2014.
  4. ^ Can We be Happier?: Evidence and Ethics. Pelican. 23 January 2020.
  5. ^ Wellbeing: Science and Policy. Cambridge University Press. March 2023.
  6. ^ a b Layard, Richard (2016). "The economics of mental health". IZA World of Labor (321). doi:10.15185/izawol.321. hdl:10419/162333. Retrieved 2 May 2021.
  7. ^ "The Depression Report. A new deal for depression and anxiety disorders" (PDF). London School of Economics. Retrieved 26 April 2009.
  8. ^ "Fit for purpose". The Guardian. London. 18 February 2009. Retrieved 26 April 2009.
  9. ^ Layard, Richard; Clark, David (2014). Thrive: The Power of Evidence-Based Psychological Therapies. London, England: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-1-846-14605-3.
  10. ^ Layard, Richard (7 April 2011). "Happiness: Lessons from a New Science". Penguin. Retrieved 3 July 2022 – via Amazon.
  11. ^ Carrington, Damian. "Global Apollo programme seeks to make clean energy cheaper than coal". The Guardian. No. 2 June 2015. Guardian News Media. Retrieved 2 June 2015.
  12. ^ Stevenson, Betsey; Wolfers, Justin (2008). "Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox" (PDF). Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. 2008: 1–87. doi:10.1353/eca.0.0001. JSTOR 27561613. S2CID 245905976. (comments and discussion pp. 88–102).
  13. ^ "Can Money Buy Happiness? Take 15 with Justin Wolfers (Video)". Blogs.cfainstitute.org. 11 November 2014.
  14. ^ "Richard Layard's Confessions — History, happiness and mental health". Soundcloud.com. Retrieved 3 July 2022.
  15. ^ "Professor Lord (Richard) Layard of Highgate". British Academy. Retrieved 5 August 2017.
  16. ^ "Eighty-four leading social scientists conferred as Fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences". Academy of Social Sciences. 19 October 2016. Archived from the original on 6 June 2019. Retrieved 5 August 2017.

External links[edit]

Orders of precedence in the United Kingdom
Preceded by Gentlemen
Baron Layard
Followed by