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Richard Layard

  • Thursday, 20 March, 2025
    Social affairs
    Apprenticeships can help fix the UK’s growth problem

    A clear commitment to train young people for work will help the government’s economic agenda

    Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer tries some welding during a visit to Sandwell College
  • Tuesday, 3 September, 2024
    UK government spending
    Policies must be justified by their wellbeing-to-cost ratio

    Labour’s spending review must apply this test to every departmental proposal

    apprentice craft fitter, works on the engine bay of a BAE Eurofighter Typhoon
  • Thursday, 26 October, 2023
    UK employment
    Rationing access to apprenticeships is increasing the UK’s skills deficit

    Places for vocational training should be funded in the same way as degrees and match demand from young learners

    Apprentices work at a BAE academy in Cumbria. Sixty years ago the route to social mobility was as a part-time apprentice or trainee, but we have shamefully neglected it
  • Monday, 6 March, 2023
    UK politics
    Make wellbeing central to public policy

    The evidence for the benefits of doing so is overwhelming

    A smiling woman having coffee on the sofa
  • Saturday, 4 December, 2021
    Social affairs
    A real ‘skills revolution’ needs Tory MPs to stop talking and act

    Ken Clarke and I are appealing to the Commons to improve opportunities for young people who don’t go to university

    Prime Minister Boris Johnson on a visit to Exeter College, which offers vocational training courses
  • Thursday, 6 August, 2020
    Mental health
    Mental health deserves priority over railways

    Covid-19 has harmed wellbeing but provision for psychological treatment is poor in the UK

    Although mental illness accounts for a quarter of the European burden of disease, it only gets 14 per cent of health expenditure in England
  • Friday, 8 May, 2020
    Employment
    Richard Layard: How to save pandemic survivors from the scourge of unemployment

    Government must prioritise getting the young back to work

    web_Unemployment burden
  • Friday, 10 April, 2020
    Q&AThe Questionnaire
    Richard Layard: ‘For 20 years, I’ve been pushing for a happier society’

    Q&A with the economist on happiness, the perils of climate change and staying fit by playing tennis

    Processed with VSCO with j3 preset
  • Thursday, 6 February, 2020
    How to find happiness – a 7-point plan
    Can We Be Happier? — yes, but it’s not about wealth or GDP

    Richard Layard’s manifesto for wellbeing urges us to focus on trust and relationships

  • Friday, 10 January, 2020
    UK government spending
    The north of England needs social infrastructure, not just rail

    Mental health interventions are the most cost-effective generators of happiness

    Local community Sunday market in the village of Husthwaite, North Yorkshire, England, UK. Over 20 stalls with a mixture of old favourites and new stalls lelling locally made products. The Apple Tree Cafe which serving tea, coffe, and home-made cakes. (Photo by In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images)
  • Friday, 26 January, 2018
    Undercover EconomistTim Harford
    The economics of happiness

    There may be more to life than cash, but should the pursuit of wellbeing guide policy?

    (Original Caption) Photo shows eleven teen-aged women and one man cheering and laughing at an unmentioned show or event. Ca. 1950s.
  • Friday, 28 November, 2014
    ReviewLife & Arts
    Best books of 2014: Economics

    A round-up of the titles to remember

  • Friday, 12 September, 2014
    FT SeriesCognitive switch: six ways to reset your thinking game
    In pursuit of happiness

    Is our pursuit of happiness obscuring the more important goal of alleviating suffering?

  • Friday, 12 September, 2014
    At Home with the FT
    UK’s ‘happiness tsar’ on the importance of mental health

    Labour peer Richard Layard on why governments need to focus more on their citizens’ wellbeing

    At home with Richard Layard
  • Thursday, 10 July, 2014
    Martin Wolf
    Mental illness is our most pressing health problem

    Given the considerable economic costs to society, treatment would pay for itself

  • Friday, 24 January, 2014
    FT MagazineSimon Kuper
    The economist’s guide to the future

    ‘In 100 years, the world’s poorest people may live like today’s middle-class Americans’

    A man wearing glasses looking at a globe
  • Thursday, 27 June, 2013
    Special Report
    In pursuit of happiness

    After four decades, new research is challenging the received wisdom about the link between money and wellbeing

  • Friday, 21 October, 2011
    FT Magazine
    Is it important to work?

    Paid employment is not the sole provider of purpose and self-worth. It can work against us if it is experienced as tedious and irrelevant

  • Sunday, 17 April, 2011
    Opinion
    The case against performance-related pay

    Payment often reduces people’s motives for doing something, writes Richard Layard

  • Tuesday, 12 April, 2011
    Brian GroomWorld
    The cheerful route to mass happiness

    In spite of the harsh economic climate, ‘happyology’ has made more progress in the UK than in most other western countries

  • Friday, 8 April, 2011
    Life & Arts
    Happy now?
  • Friday, 26 November, 2010
    Gavyn Davies
    I am feeling fine, thank you, prime minister
  • Friday, 22 October, 2010
    World
    Bhutan and Coke join hands for happiness
  • Monday, 31 May, 2010
    UK schools
    The west re-examines the rat race

    The idea that public policy should concentrate on the promotion of happiness, rather than wealth, is gaining strength

  • Friday, 19 March, 2010
    FT AlphavilleStacy-Marie Ishmael
    Econo-spats, Stephen Roach v Paul Krugman edition
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