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predict whether they will lead satisfied lives, a team headed by one
of the UK's foremost "happiness" experts, Professor Richard Layard,
has come up with an answer that may prove controversial.
Layard and his colleagues at the Wellbeing research programme at the
London School of Economics' Centre for Economic Performance conclude
that a child's emotional health is far more important to their
satisfaction levels as an adult than other factors, such as if they
achieve academic success when young, or wealth when older.
The authors explain that evaluating the quality of a child's emotional
health is based on analysing a range of internal factors in a person's
early life, including whether they endured unhappiness, sleeplessness,
eating disorders, bedwetting, fearfulness or tiredness.
The academics claim that their study, What Predicts a Successful Life?
A Life-course Model of Well-being, published in the latest edition of
the Economic Journal, offers "a completely new perspective on which
factors contribute most to a satisfying life".
The study claims to challenge "the basic assumption of educational
policy in recent years – that academic achievement matters more than
anything else". This claim appears to be an implicit criticism of
former education secretary Michael Gove, who instructed schools not to
focus on "peripheral" issues such as children's moral, social and
cultural development in favour of academic excellence.
Gove's successor, Nicky Morgan, has pledged to reverse this approach.
Layard and his team analysed data from about 9,000 people who were
born over a three-week period in 1970.
Many people have assumed income is the most important factor in an
adult's life satisfaction. But the academics say their data makes
clear this is far less important than emotional health – both in a
child and in an adult. "Income only explains about 1% of the variation
in life satisfaction among people in the UK – one sixth of the
fraction explained by emotional health," they note. Or, to put it
another way, money really cannot buy you happiness.
The economics of happiness or wellbeing is now a growing and respected
discipline within economics that is starting to influence politicians.
David Cameron has stated: "It's time we admitted that there's more to
life than money and it's time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB –
general well-being."
The authors' conclusion:
"By far the most important predictor of adult life-satisfaction is
emotional health, both in childhood and subsequently. We find that the
intellectual performance of a child is the least important childhood
predictor of life-satisfaction as an adult."
Read more about the study:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/08/happiness-childhood-emotional-health-richard-layard?view=classic
I don't think there's anything controversial about these findings that
a number of us will be able to relate to.
That's why you hear about a CEO who commits suicide because he was
unable to get over some past guilt or childhood abuse.
Emotional wellbeing is extremely important.
(photo-credit: wikimedia.org)
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