Q4 2021: The future of workplace wellbeing

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many parts of our lives, but it is perhaps our working lives where there have been the biggest changes. Large swathes of office workers flocked to their homes in March 2020, and many continue to work there most of the time. In some cases, this has become a permanent move as business look to cut the costs associated with managing an office space. It is without doubt that these changes will have had a material impact on the wellbeing of those in work. For some these changes bring greater flexibility and lead to an improved work-life balance. While for others these changes have led to increased social anxiety and loneliness. Organisations of all sizes are currently considering what policies to put in place to adapt to this changing working environment. Those organisations that take the wellbeing of their workers into account when doing so are more likely to be successful.

Empirical evidence suggests that good working relationships, having interesting work and a good work-life balance are three of the most important factors for workplace wellbeing (Krekel et al, 2018). It is in businesses best interests to have a happy workforce, as the evidence suggests that happier workers are more productive (De Neve, 2019). Higher wellbeing at work is also associated with lower staff turnover and higher profitability (Krekel et al, 2019). Workplace wellbeing interventions aimed at promoting both the health and wellbeing of staff have been shown to have positive results (Ammendolia et al, 2019).

Although these programs were shown to have positive outcomes, in other settings these interventions may not produce the equivalent results. This is because context matters. As businesses look to consider what interventions are appropriate, it is vital to tailor these interventions to the needs of the workforce (Biron, 2014). Workplace wellbeing surveys are a good starting point for understanding these needs. A key outcome from the literature is that continuity of effort and adaptation of workplace wellbeing policies is critical to their success (Herrera-Sanchez et al, 2017). In achieving this, businesses with learning structures and good governance are best placed to facilitate these adaptations (Daniels et al, 2021). In addition, the position that senior managers take in responding to wellbeing interventions put in place is key to how junior staff perceive the intervention (Passey et al, 2018).

Based on this evidence we have put together a range of recommendations to support workplace wellbeing:

1. Staff surveys: Wellbeing interventions cannot be put together effectively without understanding the issues and pressures that they are looking to alleviate. These surveys can be structured in many ways but at the very least they should be looking to capture both the level of wellbeing across the workforce and employee’s preferences towards certain interventions. This doesn’t necessarily mean asking employees directly “would you like X or Y policy to be put in place?”. But instead asking questions like “what impact would more of X have on your wellbeing?”.

2. Leading by example: The culture within a business is an important leading indicator for whether it will be able to successfully implement wellbeing interventions. Culture is generated from good leadership, and this means making sure that managers and leaders within a business are supportive of wellbeing interventions. In addition, leaders that share personal stories related to their wellbeing with employees are more likely to create a culture where employee wellbeing thrives. This is because by leading by example means that other staff are then more likely to feel empowered to share their own wellbeing stories, helping to solve issues such as presenteeism quicker.

3. Education: Providing sessions that allow employees to learn about how best to manage their wellbeing can have significant benefits. This supplies employees with information to solve issues earlier and quicker than otherwise. It can also help to develop a healthy culture within the business.

4. Safety nets: Regardless of preferences, industries, or the overall level of wellbeing within a workforce, all businesses need to put in place safety nets to support their staff. Wellbeing policies can only do so much and there will undoubtedly remain a portion of the workforce that need additional support. Providing employees with access to professional mental health support will again allow for issues to be solved quicker and earlier than otherwise. Knowing this support is available would likely lead to lower staff turnover.

For more detail, please take a look at the full report linked below.

Q3 2021: The determinants of national wellbeing

In our previous research, we have dedicated much of our time to studying the determinants of wellbeing at the individual level. We used the main findings from this research to build the Exploring Happiness Index, that allows individuals to track their wellbeing over time. We are now turning our attentions to wellbeing on a national level. That is, we are looking to identify what exactly it is that causes citizens in one country to be happier than another.

The best source of data regarding countries wellbeing is the Gallup World Poll and these data are summarised each year in the World Happiness Report. In the survey, Gallup asks people to imagine a ladder, with the lowest rung representing the worst possible life and the highest rung representing the best possible life. The scale of this ladder is from 0- 10. The results show a large amount of variation across countries.

Through data analysis, it is possible to identify a range of factors that explain a significant proportion of the variance in average wellbeing across countries. The World Happiness Report identifies six factors, which when taken together, explain 76 per cent of the variation in average wellbeing across countries. Those six factors are as follows:

• Trust: which can be measured in a number of different but typically by using measures of perceptions of corruption. See full definition.

• Generosity: the proportion of people who have donated money in the present month.

• Social support: the proportion of people who have relatives or friends they can count on to help them whenever they need them.

• Freedom: the proportion of people who are satisfied with their freedom to choose what they want to do with their life.

• Health: years of healthy life expectancy.

• Income: GDP per capita.

The findings from this research tend to be supported by other empirical analyses that consider the main determinants of national wellbeing (e.g. OECD (2012). However, this topic is much less well researched than the topic of wellbeing at the individual level. There remains scope for additional empirical analyses that test whether additional variables or different groups of variables could be more effective at explaining the variation in national wellbeing.

In this research article we also discuss wellbeing inequality. We reiterate that progress should be measured against the goal of both a high average level of wellbeing within a country and a low level of variation around this mean.

We conclude the article by discussing two areas where further research would prove useful. The first is the extent to which cultural factors play an important role in determining national wellbeing. As shown in the chart above, Latin American and Caribbean countries have a high level of wellbeing, given their income level. This may be due to cultural factors but further research is necessary to confirm this hypothesis.

The second is the relationship between environmental quality and wellbeing. The implications of climate change are likely to increasingly impact our daily lives and therefore we could expect this to become an increasingly important factor in determining national wellbeing in the future. This remains speculative for now, but will be an important area of research in the years ahead.

Q2 2021: The use of data to improve human lives

In our Q1 2021 research article we discussed how to structure policy analysis in order to improve human lives. Part of our proposed framework was creating a dashboard of economic and social indicators that allows policymakers to produce data and values-driven policies. The idea is that the trends observed in the data should form the policy strategy of the government - thereby increasing transparency and accountability, as the government is clear from the outset with regards to what they a looking to achieve.

The link between the governments policy strategy and the policies that get put into practice is that the strategy should inform where resources are spent and attentions are focussed. The individual policies will look to generate the optimal allocation of resources with respect to the the governments overarching policy strategy. The strategy will also help to lock in formal objectives for the government and the dashboard will show how the government is performing against these objectives.

The aims of this approach are multi-faceted. In particular the emphasis in this article is towards increasing trust in public institutions. Countries with higher levels of trust in the governments tend to have happier citizens, all else equal. We also saw that countries with higher levels of trust performed better during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In some advanced economies, such as the US, trust in government has been steadily declining for some time. 

In the paper we look to outline guiding principles for how to structure a framework for using data to form a governments policy strategy, as well as principles for building the dashboards too. These are briefly outlined below, and explained in more detail in full article.

The slides from the presentation in the video above are available here. Or, to read the full research article, please click on the link below.

Q1 2021: Policy analysis to improve human lives

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on how governments formulate their policies and has led to a widespread discussion about the social contract and what really matters. Increasingly, people are keen to know what and who is being considered when the government makes policy decisions that affect the lives of its citizens. In addition, there have been a number of calls from social scientists more recently to place wellbeing at the centre of policy analysis.

Traditionally, policies will be considered using cost-benefit analysis. Put simply, this is the process of measuring the benefits of a policy relative to its costs. This includes costs and benefits that are easily measured directly in monetary units, as well as less tangible costs and benefits, such as nature or health, which are then converted into monetary units where possible. Policies with the best benefits to costs ratios are the ones that are chosen to be put into action.

Most policymakers will agree that the objective of public policy is to maximise human welfare across the population. Since this is the case, measuring wellbeing more directly in policy analysis is likely to an improvement as compared with more traditional approaches which essentially look to proxy welfare . The new methods being proposed focus on producing a metric to measure how we can live long, healthy and happy lives. This combines life expectancy with measures of subjective wellbeing to produce wellbeing-adjusted life years (either known as WELLBY’s or WALY’s). In this way cost-benefit analysis can be used in very similar ways to the current approaches, except with wellbeing units playing the central role.

Both the current approach and the new wellbeing approach are not without their challenges. We outline these in detail in the paper but we briefly summarise some of the challenges below:

+ Methodological challenges in policy analysis

• Valuing statistical lives: Since policies affect human lives, it is necessary to try to value each persons life. Depending on the method used, the valuation figure can vary widely.
• Equality: Policies will impact different groups of society unevenly and it is important to capture this in the analysis.
• Sustainability: Policies may impact both current generations and future generations. It is a challenge to consider the extent to which this should be considered in the analysis. For example, a policy could reduce wellbeing today, in order to reap wider wellbeing improvements in future years.
• Isolating impacts: Often, a policy change will impact wellbeing across a number of dimensions that might be inter-related. It is important to isolate the individual impact of each of these dimensions on wellbeing, to avoid double-counting in the analysis.
• Uncertainty: Due to uncertainty about the future, often, assumptions need to be made in the analysis, and forecasts may prove to be inaccurate. These inaccuracies could significantly impact the policy proposal and lead to unintended consequences that weren’t considered in the analysis.

We conclude our article by giving our views on how best to structure policy analysis in order to improve lives. We split this into three categories.

+ A new policy framework for improving lives

The policy strategy

We believe that a dashboard of economic and social indicators should be created, which will require the government to form a policy strategy that is both values and data driven. The data production would be managed by the national statistical office, and governments would be required to create transparent objectives for policy, based on the trends in the data. This would need to be updated periodically, in order to respond to changes.

How to structure policy analysis

We believe that the following filtration process should be used for sorting policies (in order of preference).

1. First, where the wellbeing effects can be estimated, this should be used above any other approach. This should be considered the gold standard in policy analysis.

2. Second, where wellbeing effects are difficult to estimate, but we are confident that the monetary approach accurately captures the welfare effects of a policy, then we should use this method instead.

3. Third, where neither approach is adequate, this should be flagged as a future area of wellbeing research. We support the recent suggestion to create a wellbeing policy agency that will help to generate new evidence to be used in policy analysis.

+ Creating an environment for progress in policy

Outside of the policy analysis we believe there are a few ways that should help to create an environment for progress in policy.

• Effective transparency: Public officials should be transparent about the indicators and method that is used when making policy decisions. Effective transparency matters in a world of increasing information. This means layered information for different audiences and being clear aboutwhere the uncertainties lie.
• Evaluation and feedback: The policy process should produce a discussion paper where experts are able to comment on a policy action before it is put into place. This will reduce the likelihood of unintended consequences and refine the quality of the proposal.
• Diversity: The group of people who produce policy proposals should be as representative of the population they are producing these proposals for as possible. Greater diversity of thought, background and experiences will help to create more sophisticated, balanced and fair policy proposals.

+ Facing methdological challenges

• The question of valuing statistical lives is a difficult one. Current approaches using wellbeing units better match the observed valuation that can be inferred during the pandemic. These methods will need to be refined further however. Importantly, we believe that valuing Life years is a more proportionate and fair approach than valuing lives. This view is supported by the general public.
• We believe that the empirical approach during the policy analysis process should be adjusted for instances where investments today have large impacts on future generations (e.g. climate change). In these cases, the discount rate should be near to zero.
• Regarding distributional concerns, it is our view that these should be included within the empirical framework of the policy analysis where it is possible to do so. In cases where this is not possible, it is important that these remain considered qualitatively within the analysis. For example, in a case where a policy only has a small net social welfare benefit but is likely to negatively effect a marginalised group in society, this qualitative analysis could shift the policy to be rejected.

The slides from the presentation in the video above are available here. Or, to read the full research article, please click on the link below.

Q4 2020: The Exploring Happiness Index Methodology

At Exploring Happiness we have been building this index for some time. Last year we wrote two research articles that looked at the theory and evidence in relation to the determinants of life satisfaction. The detail included in these research articles played a role in the calibration of our index. In our default calibration, we use the same six determinants that we highlighted back then as the foundations of our index. The concepts that we used to build the index were simple. We look to capture the fact that everyone is different and what makes each of us happy is also different. Some people are career-driven, others live for the social scene and some are highly family-orientated. Despite this, we all also have a lot in common – we all value our health, both mental and physical, the quality of our personal relationships matters a lot and we all like to have something to do that makes us feel worthwhile.

We make our index unique for each user by creating the functionality to allow users to personalise the index, based on their own circumstances and preferences. Users are able to choose how important each of the components that make up the index are to them, and as a result the weights within the index will shift to reflect that.

In addition, our index considers the different stages and circumstances for each of us in our lives. Our base calibration is built towards the most common ‘individual type’ - an employed worker. However, when users create their accounts they will choose from a list of 13 different individual types such as parent/carer, student or retired and as a result of this choice the components that make up the index will change to reflect that individual types circumstances.

So thats the concept, but what’s the purpose? We see there as being three main benefits from using the index.

1. Being informed: If we assume that each individual’s objective in life is to maximise their own happiness, which we think is a fairly reasonable assumption, then it’s likely to be useful to know how happy you are now and how happy you have been in the past. Our decisions, big or small, will play an important role in determining our happiness and we are more likely to make the right decision when we have better information available to draw upon. The usage of this index provides users with this information.

2. Mental health tool: Using this index allows users time to reflect, to think about what has been going well and what has been more challenging. There is also a significant amount of research available which points to the benefits of self-reflection on mental health. This has been shown for self-reflection in a number of forms (e.g. from expressive writing to gratitude journaling), across various life stages and as an effective treatment for those with diagnosed mental illnesses. Our view, which we intend to robustly test in the future, is that users of the index will be able to build resilience to mental health illnesses through the method of self-reflection that this index requires.

3. The ultimate tracker: Nowadays, it is not uncommon to track several parts of our lives, from steps to sleep to calories. But whats the point in tracking these things? For most people, it’s because they believe if they do more steps or sleep better, they will end up feeling better. This index allows you to check whether thats true in practice.

The index methodology paper linked below outlines the evidence used to select the variables that make up the index, how this evidence feeds through to the calibration of the index and then how the base calibration is adjusted according to the users choices about their preferences and circumstances.

Q3 2020: Analysing the impact of COVID-19 on wellbeing

In our previous research article, we suggested policy solutions for the recovery period that were consistent with our overarching goal: increasing happiness and wellbeing in society in a sustainable and equal way. We think that this should be the main goal of governments in developed countries. However in order for this to be the main goal we need to be able to measure and track our progress against this goal. Fortunately, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has been doing this in the United Kingdom since 2011. This means we have a highly valuable yardstick with which to measure how the UK is progressing. Huge amounts of attention have been paid to the financial impacts of COVID-19 and although they have been significant, this information only tells us part of the story. It is important to measure progress on a wider range of variables. All these variables should feed through to the overarching goal of sustainably and equally increasing wellbeing.

Our research article includes four main takeaways:

The initial impact of the pandemic on life satisfaction in the UK

Source: Office of National Statistics. Note: The frequency of the data in this chart changes from quarterly to weekly at the end of Q1 2020.

1. The initial impact of the pandemic on wellbeing was large. Even though it may not look like it, the decline life satisfaction scores shown in the chart to the right is large. Since 2011, the lowest quarterly life satisfaction score, on average, was 7.35 (the highest was 7.71 in 2018). These weekly scores were produced by the ONS during the pandemic to gauge an understanding of how the pandemic was influencing citizens wellbeing. The average life satisfaction score across these high frequency surveys is 7.00, which is 0.65 lower than in Q1 2020, almost double the range since the inception of this measure (range is 0.36). A note of caution is that the sample of these weekly surveys is much smaller than the quarterly surveys (approx. 1,500 vs. 30,000)

2. Assessing how wellbeing is likely to change in the future is useful for informing policymakers. In the research article we provided an illustrative example of how wellbeing may change going forward based on forecasts of financial variables and known historical relationships between these variables and life satisfaction. It is highly useful for policymakers to be aware of how wellbeing is likely to change in the future in response to both policies and market dynamics. Policies could then be tweaked accordingly in order to support citizens wellbeing.

3. Non-financial indicators are likely to have had a larger influence on wellbeing than financial indicators. By combining the data from the chart above with our forecast of how life satisfaction is likely to change in response to changes in financial variables, we were able to conclude that non-financial indicators (e.g. mental/physical health, trust in government, personal relationships) played a larger role in the recent decline in life satisfaction than financial variables (e.g. income or employment).

4. Wellbeing inequality is likely to increase as a result of the pandemic. Data suggests that those on lower incomes are likely to have a larger financial hit as a result of the pandemic than those on higher incomes (with the majority of those on higher incomes actually able to increase their savings this year). It is also well known that changes in income matter more for life satisfaction at lower incomes. Therefore, we should expect that the distribution of life satisfaction will widen as a result of the pandemic, meaning wellbeing inequality has increased. This should be a key concern for policymakers.

Please click on the link below to read about this in more detail. Comments are welcome.

Q2 2020: Responding to COVID-19 by prioritising sustainability and wellbeing in the recovery

With thanks to Maximilian Magnacca Sancho for his help with this article.

The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the way that we live our lives. As time passes it is becoming apparent that even once the lockdown policies have been eased and some level of normality has been resumed, the new world that we live in will be different to the one we knew before. This article focuses on emerging trends that have largely taken place as a result of COVID-19, or in some cases the pandemic has simply accelerated a trend that was already occurring. We then look to offer a range of public policy solutions for the recovery period, where the overarching objective is to increase wellbeing in society in a sustainable way.

But first, before we get to the policy solutions, briefly, what are the main economic and wellbeing effects that we have seen as a result of COVID-19? In 2020, it is expected that the fall in overall economic output is going to be larger than during the financial crisis in 2008. Much of this is due to the level of decline in economic activity as a result of the UK governments lockdown policy. This was a necessary decision in order to reduce the spread of the virus and ensure the NHS still has capacity to treat those that have unfortunately caught the disease. However, it has led to a significant income shock for both households and businesses. Levels of consumer spending have declined rapidly, and large portions of the labour market are now out of work. Alongside sharp falls in measures of economic performance, measures of wellbeing have declined rapidly as well. Increases in measures of uncertainty have mirrored increases in anxiety. While, social isolation policies are having a large impact on measures of happiness.

The UK government responded to the shock posed by COVID-19 with a range of policy interventions to provide funding to those that have been most impacted. At a macro level, the long-lasting effects of this crisis will be more pertinent if economic activity does not respond quickly after the government’s schemes have ended. Large portions of UK businesses have limited cash reserves to fall back on in a scenario where demand remains subdued for some time. However, even if the recovery period is strong there will still have been some clear winners and losers during this crisis. Younger workers, those on lower incomes and those with atypical work contracts are the ones that have been most heavily impacted. Whilst those on higher incomes, that are more likely to be able to work from home, have increased their household savings during this period, due to less opportunities to consume.

The policy solutions outlined below aim to be complementary of one another and look to amplify observed trends that are positive for wellbeing and to provide intervention where trends have been negative for wellbeing:

1.      Climate at the centre of the response: This is less a policy recommendation and more a theme for the response. However, our message here is that increased public spending projects, focused towards green initiatives should be combined with a coherent carbon tax policy which influences incentives and helps to support the UK’s transition to a low carbon economy.

2.     Labour market reforms: The government should look to develop a centralised job retraining and job matching scheme that supports workers most impacted by COVID-19, helps to encourage structural transformation towards emerging industries and increases the amount of highly skilled workers in the UK workforce.

3.     Tough decisions on business: Some businesses will require further assistance from the UK government in the form of equity funding, rather than the debt funding seen so far. This should be done on a conditional basis, requiring all these businesses to comply with the UK’s climate objectives and should only be provided to businesses in industries that are expanding or strategically important to the UK economy.

4.     Modernising the regions on a cleaner, greener and higher level: Looking to build on the governments ‘levelling up the regions’ policy to reduce regional inequalities, our policy consists of government funded infrastructure spending that includes green investments for regions outside of the UK’s capital.  

5.     Harbouring that rainbow effect: Building on the increased community spirit that has been observed during the pandemic, this policy solution looks to increase localised community funding to maintain social cohesion and support those with mental health issues. 

Lastly, as the policy recommendations focus on expanding public investment to support the recovery, it is important to consider what this means for public debt sustainability in the UK. The conclusion is that as a result of the low interest rate environment, the most efficient way out of this recession is to borrow and spend on projects that will increase resilience to future shocks and support the UK’s transition to a low carbon economy.

Please click on the link below to read about this in more detail. Comments are welcome.

Q1 2020: How much do government finances influence wellbeing?

At Exploring Happiness, at the end of 2019 we made the decision to reduce the frequency of our research article publications from monthly to quarterly, with the aim being that this would allow more time to produce unique and insightful research. This article is the first of these quarterly publications, and it is focusing on assessing the relationship between public finances and countries wellbeing.

Some governments believe that it is necessary to have a high level of government spending in order to provide a helping hand when things don’t go so well. In order for this to remain sustainable over a long period of time, government taxation also needs to be quite high in these countries, as this is used to fund the spending. However, in other countries they believe that is not the place for governments to get too involved and that the market will sort itself out in the end. In this article we are looking to assess which of these two approaches tend to lead to a greater level of wellbeing for its citizens, based on the data we have available. Importantly, we are not suggesting that there is a clear direction of causation in our analysis but we are looking to bring together the data and make inferences based on the relationships we observe.

Additionally, before we get into the detail our of study there is one key point that we would like to make clear: policy design matters much more than absolute spending or taxation. This matters now more than ever, as at the time of writing this, advanced economy governments all around the world are announcing significant stimulus packages in order to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, we should expect to observe a significant increase in government expenditure as a percentage of GDP. These stimulus packages are currently necessary, in order to restore confidence, reduce the amount of people being laid off and the number businesses going into insolvency. However, whilst necessary, they are not likely to be well designed. These policies are more a case of throwing significant sums of money at the problem than anything else. It will not be efficient and much of this spending will have limited knock-on effects on the economy. Well-designed government policies considers how the government can play a role in the market in order to allow innovation to develop, in an environment that is stable and secure.

The relationship between countries wellbeing scores and their governments finances

Source: UN World Happiness Report Data, IMF WEO (October 2019) & EH calculations. Note: This chart shows correlation coefficients between countries' wellbeing scores and public finance metrics.

In order to complete our analysis, we needed to merge two datasets. To get wellbeing scores for all countries around the world we used the recently updated data from the UN’s World Happiness Report.  To get public finances data, we used the data published in the IMF’s October World Economic Outlook. We then needed to filter for all countries that had both sufficient public finances data (>10 years) and that are included in the UN’s World Happiness Report and as such our final sample came to 146 countries

We chose to also complete the analysis on a smaller sub-group of advanced economies (AE) in order to remove some of the income effect and allow for a more consistent comparison across countries. It is well known that more developed economies have higher wellbeing scores, meaning it is difficult to draw accurate conclusions when comparing countries with vastly different economic circumstances. Our main goal is to find a large enough group of countries that are similar in nature and wealth but choose to take different approaches for their public finances in order to observe how these different approaches may affect their citizens wellbeing.

We have summarised our key findings from our data analysis in the following points:

1. Countries with larger public debt-to-GDP ratios tend to report lower wellbeing scores. There is a small and positive correlation equal to 16% for the all country sample compared to a much stronger negative correlation equal to -63% for the AE sub-sample. More developed countries are able to accumulate greater amounts of debt as a proportion of GDP than developing ones and this has created the positive correlation in the all country sample. This is an example of the income effect dominating, due to richer countries reporting higher wellbeing scores. The income effect is removed in the AE sub-sample and the correlation coefficient becomes significantly negative.

2. Countries that are able to manage their public finances better, through fiscal surpluses, or small fiscal deficits tend to report higher wellbeing scores. The correlation coefficient for the all country sample is equal to 25% compared to 39% for the AE sub-sample.

3. Countries with higher government revenues and expenditure, as a proportion of GDP, tend to report higher wellbeing scores. The correlation coefficients are slightly larger for the all country sample, which is likely due to the income effect playing some role here too. AE’s tend to find it easier to extract greater amount of tax revenues from their citizens, due to low income countries shadow economies being proportionally larger and that their government institutions are less sophisticated. Nevertheless, there is still a relatively strong positive correlation in the AE sub-sample, meaning the income effect doesn’t significantly change this relationship.

4. AE’s countries that have run larger fiscal deficits over the last 10 years have reported greater increases in wellbeing scores over that same time period than AE’s who have put in place more stringent fiscal policies. This is a small amount of evidence to suggest that countries that have put in place austerity policies since the previous financial crisis may have constrained their citizens wellbeing during this time.

This is all discussed in greater detail in the full article below and we have explained some of the key concepts in the video above too.

Food and wellbeing: how your diet can impact how you feel

With additional thanks to Anna Cunningham for her help in preparing this article.

This research paper is looking to move away from the serious discussions of policies and economics for one month and looking instead at some recent evidence of something we do every day that impacts our wellbeing: eating. Everyone knows that eating a healthy diet is good for our physical health. However, the relationship between food and our mental health and wellbeing is a less well-known concept. There is currently plenty of research being produced to show the benefits of eating the right foods on how we feel. This is relevant to all of us because a happy person is often a more productive person.

In this summary article, we do not provide any information from the first two sections of the paper since the final section holds the most practical information. For those interested though, click on the link below to read about how what we eat affects our brain functioning in section one and how societies pressures has been changing our relationship with food in section two.

In this section we focus on three of the most common mental health disorders: depression, anxiety and insomnia. Our aim is to display some of the evidence on the types of foods that can be beneficial to improve how we feel:

1. Depression: often when we feel low, our appetite may also be quite low as a result of this, therefore foods like lemon, ginger or cayenne pepper are great to stimulate our appetite. Herbal teas also ease your digestive fluids and boost your appetite. In addition, a low protein diet can be a recipe for feeling down. The building blocks of protein, the amino acids, are important for our brains, helping to make our neurotransmitters. So for those with depression we are looking for meals that are appetite inducing and full of proteins and healthy fats. (get yourself some avocados!!)

   Zinc imbalances has been shown to be correlated with a whole range of mental health disorders and healthy fats such as Omega-3’s are crucial for helping to boost our mood. Foods such fish (especially salmon), nuts (e.g. cashew nuts or sesame and pumpkin seeds), and eggs are recommended for those feeling low as these are all very high in protein, zinc and healthy fats.

2. Anxiety: increasingly studies are starting to find strong links between gut health and anxiety. The healthier your gut is, the less anxious you feel (Schmidt et al, 2014). Changing the types of carbohydrates that we eat to be wholemeal can help reduce the amount of ‘resistant starch’ travelling through our digestive systems. Boosting the supply of fruit and vegetables that are high in fibre is also very helpful as they are high in magnesium – which has been proven to ease tension and relieve muscular pain and headaches, which are common side effects of anxiety.

   The most commonly known way to boost your gut health however is through pre and probiotics. Prebiotics are non-digestible foods that feed the growth of bacteria in the colon, found particularly in fermented vegetables. Probiotics are live bacteria and yeasts in yogurt, dairy products and other foods such as miso and kombucha (fermented tea).

   Lastly, there are many ‘high-anxiety’ foods that you should try to limit, such as: sugar, antibiotics, alcohol, fatty cuts of meats, burnt food and processed food, since all are likely to contribute to poor gut health. In particular, it’s important to avoid low blood sugar levels by not eating sugary processed foods and aim to find nutritious, slow-burning snacks that you enjoy, so you’ll keep coming back to them.

3. Insomnia: As to be expected there is somewhat of a correlation between those that have anxiety and those that have insomnia, often high anxiety can trigger insomnia. But also getting a restful night’s sleep is correlated with feeling calm and happy so the causation runs both ways. Given the correlation, there are overlaps in terms of foods for this mental health disorder (e.g. avoiding processed sugars and aiming to generate good gut health) but the timing is more important for those with insomnia. For example, magnesium is also important, but rather than having this through eating lots of nuts and seeds, have an Epsom salts bath before bed instead. Epsom salts are high in magnesium and you’ll absorb this through your skin, coming out feeling relaxed and ready to get good night sleep.

   Regular, well-balanced meals throughout the day are also beneficial – aim to avoid eating too much food in one sitting, as this can set your body out of kilter and break-up your routine for the day. Building a routine helps your body to understand when it is time to go to sleep. It should reduce stress too, as less time is spent pondering events in the future when they are already set in stone. Protein takes longer to digest than carbohydrates, so it keeps us feeling full. Consequently, it’s good to ensure a balanced meal of protein and carbohydrates in the evening as this will avoid you snacking just before bed or in the night.

Discussing policy implications on migration and wellbeing

If you made to the end, well done! Sorry it ends a little abruptly, we ran out of video time on our camera….

Migration is increasingly seen as a high-priority public policy topic for governments and we believe at Exploring Happiness, rightly so. Migration can have a direct impact on economic prosperity, human development and safety and security within a country. As a result of the importance of this topic, it tends to receive a lot of media attention.  Unfortunately, it is our view that the coverage of this topic tends to have an over-representative negative bias. This may partly reflect the changing nature of migration in some parts of the world. But as is the case with most news coverage nowadays, a greater emphasis is focused towards bad outcomes over good outcomes – it sells better and captures more attention.

Developing a better understanding of the impact of migration on wellbeing of both migrants and natives is a vital topic that should be debated and researched much more. This will allow policymakers to develop solutions to allow for greater human development through migration. The latest estimate from 2017 shows that 3.4% of the global population, or 257.7 million people, are international migrants around the world. A rise in the number of civil wars and conflicts has led to an increased amount of people becoming displaced, both within and across borders. 40.3 million people are categorised as displaced worldwide and 22.5 million as refugees, based on data from 2016. Within this context, policymakers should remember that migration corridors are not only shaped by economic and trade factors but also by conflict, smuggling, trafficking and insecurity.

Nevertheless, policymakers should also consider the economic benefits of migration too. Migration can allow for a greater spread of wealth and the increase in migration over the past two decades has shown this. It was estimated that in 1997 $77bn had been sent back to countries of origin in the form of remittances, whereas this figure has increased to $529bn, just 15 years later in 2012. Within the longer paper linked below we discuss the benefits and drawbacks of migration from a policymaker’s perspective and we summarise this below briefly:

1. Wages and remittances: generally, migrants often earn higher wages than they would have done in their origin countries. Migrants friends and family that stayed at home also benefit from their migration through remittances, which provides a stable source of income. Remittance inflows to developing economies have been steadily increasing to now become one of the most important sources of external finance for these countries. However, research has recently shown that remittances can cause countries to stagnate. An important reason for this is that increases in FDI are often associated with boosting productivity, whilst increasing remittances often feed through increased household consumption. Potentially, remittances can inhibit the motivation of workers and policymakers within their country to come up with innovative solutions that lead to progress. 

2. Labour Market: evidence is increasingly showing that migration can benefit the country of origins labour market by reducing both unemployment and underemployment (that is, those that would like to work full-time that are currently working part-time or those working in a job below their qualification level).In terms of the benefits to the host country, this depends crucially on whether the skills of the migrant workers are complementary or substitutes to those of domestic workers.

3. Innovation and transfer of skills: by either nature or necessity, studies have found that migrants are often more likely to be risk takers, and this can lead to large contributions to destination countries – through innovation. Where there is good information available before the migrant takes the decision of where to move, this usually leads to a more informed decision and the migrant will move somewhere their skills are complementary. This leads to a good transfer of skills as the migrant worker has a positive impact on productivity within that country.

4. Fiscal Impact: the migration of young workers can help to ease pressures on pension systems of high-income countries with ageing populations. And in contrast to popular opinions, a recent study found that the net fiscal effects of immigration for most OECD countries is small and positive.

5. Social impact: potentially this is the most important area for discussion if we are looking at this topic from a perspective of the impact of migration on wellbeing. The main two areas are unsurprisingly: health and education. The findings from a World Bank study in 2016 are quite staggering in this aspect, “migrants from the poorest countries, on average, experienced a 15-fold increase in income, a doubling of school enrolment rates and a 16-fold reduction in child mortality after moving to a developed country”.

In the final section of the paper we discuss in depth the findings from the 2013 World Migration Report on migrant wellbeing and development. In our opinion it would be more beneficial to read the paper for this bit but we summarise the findings below for those in a hurry!

Migrants moving between two high income countries report the best impact on their wellbeing, across a range of dimensions including life satisfaction safety, community attachment and health. High to low income country migrants tend enjoy greater economic prowess but their social connections are often limited, and they are less likely to report that they have someone they can count on for help. On the flip side, low to high income migrants suffer from the economic differential and struggle to make the transition but on average they are better off for having migrated than those who stayed at home. 

The determinants of a happy life: the evidence

In the previous article we spent some time discussing the foundations of this topic and we were looking at how happiness distributions are formed. Our main goal in that article was to highlight that it’s important for each of us to know where we sit on a happiness distribution, and which if life’s determinants are most important to us. From there we can make more informed decisions based on our own preferences.

This time round we are turning to the evidence to see what are the most important determinants that come up time and time again studies related to this topic. There are five main determinants (and one bonus one that we think is important) that tend to stand out (in order of importance):

1. Family relationships: In almost every study of the determinants of happy lives, your family relationships and your close private life are deemed to have the greatest impact on your overall happiness. Becoming divorced or seperated has a significant negative impact on your short term happiness. Although it can turn out to have a positive impact on your happiness if the separation leads to an improvement in your overall wellbeing. The evidence of the effect of having children is very mixed. Having children can increase the level of purpose in one’s life but often it leads to less pleasure due to having less free time. Typically, marriage increases your happiness and there are many knock-on effects that benefit both of your lives: you share resources, you give love towards one another, you have better sex lives than single people (more of it and more satisfying) and you tend to be healthier and live longer, on average. As we have mentioned many times, these results are averages and there will be a lot variation around these results. The variation in relationships tends to depend on the quality and stability of the relationship and this matters a lot more than just being involved in one. 

2. Financial situation: Our financial situation can be subject to a great degree of variation depending on our circumstances. We know from extensive studies on this topic, that typically the effect of an increase in income on our happiness is positive but diminishing. There are many factors that play a role in this relationship, such as the current size of the “safety net” we have available to ourselves and how this is impacted should a financial shock occur such as becoming unemployed. If becoming unemployed severely impacts your ability to meet your mortgage payments in the coming months then it’s likely to have a bigger impact on your happiness, through increased stress, than for someone with a large safety net. Expectations matter too, if you already anticipated your wage increasing then this is likely to have a small impact on your overall happiness. Studies that have included relative income suggest that your happiness is strongly affected by who you compare yourself to. If your comparison group also receive a pay increase when you do, the impact on your happiness from this increase in income is very limited. 

3. Work fulfilment: Employment increases our sense of purpose and makes us feel happier. In most cases it offers an opportunity for social interaction, it increases our feeling of worthwhileness and gives us a reason to get up in the morning. Therefore, it is unsurprising to find that in most studies it stands out as one of the most important determinants of how happy our lives are.

4. Community & friends: The quality of our community is incredibly important for determining whether we make friends, the types of relationships we have with our friends, and whether we feel safe. It is not easy to measure this accurately so typically researchers tend to focus on asking questions to participants related to trust. If we have good relationships with our friends, we should be able to trust them, and we should also feel safe too. In Japan, less than 2% of people have reported falling victim to an assault over the last 12 months, which is one of the lowest rates in OECD – despite this a large proportion of participants in the OECD better life survey rated this as one of the main priorities for their country. This would tend to suggest that for people in Japan the effect of community and safety on their overall happiness is greater than for people in other parts of the world.

5. Health: Both physical health and mental health have significant impacts on our overall happiness. It is an important determinant of how happy we are. Having said this, healthy members of society do tend to over-estimate the loss of happiness that people actually experience from many of the main medical conditions. The data has shown that we can adapt quite well to a drop in our physical health through changing what we tend to focus our attention on. We find other ways to obtain purpose and pleasure. Having said this, people tend to never adapt to chronic pain or to mental illness and this is why the effect of mental illnesses on overall happiness level always supersedes the affects from physical illnesses. 

6. Leisure time: Most of us use our free time to do things that we enjoy, and this makes us happier. Having said this, often it is the case that there are many other activities that we would prefer to be doing during our free time but for one reason or another, we don’t. Essentially, we aren’t fully considering all our preferences towards different activities when we are making decisions about how to spend our free time and this leads to a sub-optimal outcome. This is why we feel that tracking your happiness through time, to get a better understanding of your preferences should lead to a better allocation of your time, therefore making you happier.

The determinants of a happy life: the foundations

This month’s article is the first half of a two-part study into the determinants of what makes a happy life. This is all part of a broader piece of work we are doing at Exploring Happiness, but all will be revealed with respect to this in good time. This article focuses on building some foundations for thinking about this topic, which are vital for understanding what will follow, as we aim to construct a framework for assessing how happy our lives are. To simply say that it’s complicated would be a cop out but there certainly isn’t a ‘one-size fits all’ approach to solving this problem. We are all different and we will outline in this article how our differences shape our happiness.

In next month’s article we will turn to the evidence currently available related to key components of our lives and how important they are in determining our happiness. The results in this paper will typically be averages based on large sample studies and therefore each result will have distribution of responses around this average. For example, a result may say: an increase in your income of 50% leads to an increase in your happiness on a scale of 0-100, of 10% on average. Of course, it is not 10% for everyone, this is just the average across all the people in the sample. In this month’s article we are focusing on understanding more about this distribution, since it is this that shows how we differ. We cover four main topic areas which we have summarised below:

1. Attentiveness: At Exploring Happiness we subscribe to the view that your happiness is determined by how you allocate your attention. What you think about, tends to drive how you behave. And this in turn, determines your happiness. Using this logic, you can conclude that you will be happiest when you can allocate you attention as best you can. This theory stipulates that the same life event can happen to two very similar people and the effect on their happiness can differ depending on how much attention each individual allocates to this event.

2. Preferences: Each one of us has their own likes and dislikes and it is this, that at least in part, determines how we choose to allocate our attention. Therefore, if it is our allocation of attention that determines our happiness, then we need to think about how our different preferences towards things determines how we allocate our attention. Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with this. Firstly, our attention isn’t always allocated consciously, often we find ourselves thinking about things entirely subconsciously and this may or may not be consistent with our true preferences. And secondly, often we don’t actually know what our true preferences are, and in actual fact, we may be allocating our attention towards our dislikes rather than our likes in some cases. So, this makes the whole situation a little murkier and more complicated ‒ such is life. 

3. Track your happiness: So, we know what the goal is: we want to best understand our preferences towards different elements of our life so then we can make well-informed decisions about how to allocate our attention. Therefore, we have created the following spreadsheet that you can download: here. The spreadsheet that allows you to track how you feel on a daily basis. Give yourself a score from 0-100 each day, and then answer a range of different questions we have provided for you to ask yourself each day so you can start to build a daily log of what you did that day (whether you socialised, exercised, chilled out or studied etc.). Don’t feel that you only have to stick to answering the questions we have provided in the spreadsheet, add some of your own questions that you think might be more relevant to your own circumstances. The aim is that you understand your preferences towards things a little better and therefore you can look to allocate your attention in a way that is consistent with this.

4. Balancing different forms of happy lives: Before leaving you to get stuck into this new tool that we hope will be your ticket to a happier life we want to briefly touch on the different forms of happy lives. This should hopefully help you to understand that we can all lead equally happy lives but in completely different ways. There are many different theories on this topic, positive psychologist ‒ Martin Seligman, is one of the most famous with his views on the ‘good life, the pleasant life and the meaningful life’. The ‘pleasant life’ is one full of positive emotions and raw feelings. The ‘good life’ is related to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s famous psychological concept of ‘flow’. A person that is capable of engaging in ‘flow’ regularly is one that participates often in activities that require the perfect balance between a high level of skill and a high level of challenge. Professional athletes are one of the best examples of people that are highly capable of ‘flow’. This feeling can increase your happiness rapidly and is a very different form of pleasure since during ‘flow’ you don’t feel anything because you are entirely absorbed in what you are doing. Finally, the ‘meaningful life’ relates to contributing towards something that is bigger than yourself. Using your strengths and skills to benefit others is a good example of this.

Consider the different forms of happy lives as you track your daily happiness, for most people it’s about managing the trade-offs to gauge the right balance. And to add a final spanner in the works before we finish, we should mention that your preferences will change over time. This will mean as you start to make more informed decisions based upon a better understanding of your likes and dislikes, you will need to ensure that these choices remain consistent with your current objectives as your circumstances change. Good luck.