Let’s work together to create a happier world
The Happier Lives Institute connects donors, researchers, and policymakers with the most cost-effective opportunities to increase global wellbeing.
Using the latest subjective wellbeing data, we identify the problems that matter most to people and find evidence-based ways to solve them.
Let's work together to create a happier world
The Happier Lives Institute connects donors, researchers, and policymakers with the most cost-effective opportunities to increase global wellbeing.
Using the latest subjective wellbeing data, we identify the problems that matter most to people and find evidence-based ways to solve them.
Measuring what matters
Most people agree that happiness matters.
You might think it is the only thing that matters.
Over the last 30 years, pioneering academics in economics, philosophy, and psychology have tested and developed reliable measures of happiness and life satisfaction.Â
Today, large population surveys allow us to measure and track wellbeing across the world. We can stop relying on measures of wealth or health as our best guess for how people’s lives are going.
But what is wellbeing and how can we measure it?
You can make a difference
The cost-effective interventions we’ve identified may surprise you. For example, few people expected psychotherapy to be 9 times more cost-effective than cash transfers.
Our latest news and research
Meet our new team members
This month, we’re delighted to welcome three new members to our team: Dr Lily Yu (Grants Strategist), Dr Ryan Dwyer (Senior Researcher), and Rachel Strate (Operations Manager). Read more
To WELLBY or not to WELLBY? Measuring non-health, non-pecuniary benefits using subjective wellbeing
We propose the wellbeing-adjusted life year (WELLBY), the SWB equivalent of the DALY or QALY, as the obvious framework to do cost-effectiveness analyses of non-health, non-pecuniary benefits. As our previous work has shown, using WELLBYs can change funding priorities by giving more weight to improving mental health, compared to DALYs or income measures; and they may reveal different priorities in other areas too. Read more
Deworming and decay: replicating GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness analysis
We provide four recommendations to improve the clarity and transparency of GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness analyses. These are to (1) publicly explain and defend their assumptions about the effect of deworming over time; (2) explain their cost-effectiveness analyses in writing; (3) illustrate the sensitivity of their results to key parameters; (4) make it clear when an estimate is subjective or evidence-based. Read more
