Professor Lord Layard and the Dalai Lama
Thanks to a landmark gift from the John Templeton Foundation, LSE is set to provide policy-makers over the next three years with a quantitative model of what determines an individual’s enjoyment of life and their behaviour to others, both as children and adults.
At present no such model exists, but thanks to research from the School and its partners over the last ten years, the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) will be able to utilise exemplary cohort data, including that which examines the role played by factors such as mental health and personal values.
The three-year project, to be led by Professor Lord Layard, will include a number of interventions for adults seeking a route to meaningful, pro-social living. One series, entitled Exploring What Matters, will be a vehicle for worldwide public education and is set to be launched by the Dalai Lama. Meanwhile an initiative named Healthy Minds will examine social and emotional learning, relationships, healthy living, mental health, parenting, and mindfulness for children aged 11-14.
A key outcome of the programme will be the publication of an authoritative text, which will for the first time offer policy-makers a consistent set of estimates as to how different factors affect people’s enjoyment of life – both those external to individuals and inherent inner factors within them. Another key element of the project will be to provide reports on the content of the interventions and their impact.
“I am most excited about working on this project and providing policy-makers with such unprecedented research,” said Professor Lord Layard. “People want more from life than just material progress – they want a life which gives joy. This raises the big question, how can greater enjoyment of life become a realisable goal for policy-makers and individuals? Thanks to the generosity of the John Templeton Foundation and the hard work of our colleagues in LSE Advancement, we now have a real opportunity to start providing answers.”
The Wellbeing Programme was founded in 2003 when Professor Lord Layard gave a series of public lectures on Happiness: Has social science a clue? His subsequent book, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, explored the paradox of societies getting richer but often failing to become happier and has been published in 20 languages. Research from the programme has been devoted to understanding the causes of wellbeing and how it affects other outcomes important to policy-makers, such as education and physical health.
LSE is grateful to the John Templeton Foundation for its partnership and its pertinent inter-disciplinary research focus on human purpose. This programme will create the necessary momentum and critical mass necessary for establishing a permanent focus for the study of wellbeing at LSE, a fitting recognition of Professor Lord Layard’s fifty year commitment to the School’s mission of the betterment of society.