Book Quote for Public Policy Makers
Can we really persuade policy makers to focus on the life-satisfaction of the people?
The answer is surely Yes. Already the OECD urges governments to have as their goal the well-being of their people, and some governments use well-being as a criterion for policy making.18 But most policy making worldwide still proceeds by a series of ad hoc arguments, with no attempt made to make one argument commensurate with another. At one time Margaret Thatcher attempted to establish wealth creation as an overreaching criterion in Britain. But this did not work because no one believed that the main objective of health care, or child protection, or elderly care, or law and order, or parks was to increase wealth. People had some wider, fluffier concept of what things mattered, but no way to compare them.
Today well-being research offers real evidence to fill that vacuum. It is early days yet, and the numbers in this book are offered to stimulate further refinement rather than as final answers. But no one can doubt that they offer a significantly different perspective from traditional beliefs.
Can they actually be used to evaluate policies? Again the answer is Yes. When existing methods of cost-benefit analysis were first proposed sixty years ago, they seemed impossibly ambitious. But, within the limits to which they apply, they have been constantly refined. As a general approach they are now unquestioned. The same will happen to policy appraisal based on well-being. It will eventually become totally accepted as the standard way to evaluate social policies, and much else besides. And hopefully experimentation will become the standard prelude to policy change. The consequences will be massive.
As Angela Merkel said “What matters to people must be the guideline for our policies.” That requires evidence from well-being research, and policy makers brave enough to apply it. If that happens, we can surely build much happier societies.
— The Origins of Happiness: The Science of Well-Being over the Life Course
Related:
The case for making wellbeing the goal of public policy;
The UK’s all-party parliamentary group on wellbeing economics recently drafted a report on how this underlying concept could be applied to the forthcoming government spending review. It argued for a package of additional spending amounting to £8bn (0.4 per cent of GDP). The top priority would be increased resources for the treatment of mental illness. Furthermore, it argues, the budget for physical and mental healthcare should be separated, to protect the latter from encroachment by the former. The second priority would be investing in the wellbeing of children in schools. The third priority would be skilled employment. This requires a much higher resource priority for non-university-based further education, which is being squeezed by the explosion in the number of university students. That is also precisely what the Augar Review of post-18 education and funding recommends. A fourth priority is funding social care for children, the disabled and the old, as well as centres for children, youth and old people. The last priority is a shift in prison policy towards promoting rehabilitation, skill acquisition and mental health.
This suggested new approach to wellbeing can thus be viewed in two different ways. The broader path is to reconsider all government policy against its contribution to social wellbeing, as New Zealand is trying to do. The narrower is to shift resources, at the margin, towards areas of spending most likely to reduce the causes of great harm, such as mental ill health and loneliness. One does not have to buy all of the broader package to accept this shift in priorities toward alleviating the biggest harms. All parties should agree on this as the minimum goal for policy in a civilised and prosperous society.
