Our top takeaways from the Bloom Mental Health Report
With research by us at the , Bloom Wellbeing Fund has recently released a new report providing an up to date overview of the problem of mental illness, and the best... Read more.
HLI is no longer recommending NEPI
We are writing a sad update concerning an HLI-recommended charity, Network for Empowerment & Progressive Initiative (NEPI), which ran a project called STYL that... Read more.
HLI is recruiting a Marketing Manager!
Marketing Manager Location: Remote (HLI’s registered address is in Bristol, England) Salary: £30,000 – £40,000 per year (pro rata) or equivalent, depending... Read more.
HLI is recruiting an Operations Coordinator!
Operations Coordinator (Part-time) Role: Operations CoordinatorOrganisation: (HLI)Location: Remote (UK-based preferred)Hours: Part-time, 2-4 days per weekSalary:... Read more.
The Happiness Factory: An ISQOLS 2025 Story
It was a fine summer’s day when Sam and I waltzed onto the plane in top hats. Yes, actual top hats. On Ryanair. The cabin crew seem somewhat bewildered, but quite... Read more.
How to best buy happiness
Part of our frustration with the “can money buy happiness?” debate is that it obviously matters... Read more.
Can money buy happiness?
People say ‘money can’t buy happiness’. Other people offer the reply that “the people who say ‘money can’t buy happiness’ just don’t know where to... Read more.
What does happiness mean? The war for the meaning of happiness
This may sound like a faux-intellectual investigation of something that’s obvious. But when I tell people I’m a happiness researcher, sometimes people get this... Read more.
Web Developer Job: Redesign a Non-Profit Website with Global Impact
Freelance Web Developer Wanted! The is looking for a freelance web developer to lead a full website redesign. We’re a growing non-profit applying cutting-edge... Read more.
How to improve your happiness: an unexpected truth
RuPaul (a personal icon of mine) is famous for saying, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?” It’s catchy, it’s empowering,... Read more.
HLI is recruiting a Development Manager!
Job description Location: Remote-first / Bristol, England (Registered Office) Salary: ~£40,000 pro-rata per annum (depending on experience and hours), or equivalent... Read more.
Is the charity sector fundamentally broken?
At the , we found some charities are hundreds or thousands of times more cost-effective than others. This means that we, the donors, are funding the wrong things.... Read more.
How to choose a charity to donate to
When it comes to doing good, where you give matters just as much as how much you give. With over a million charities competing for your support, choosing the right... Read more.
Happier giving: Why we focus on happiness, not just health and wealth
In our last blog post, we argued that the effective giving movement, where people donate to more impactful charities, is just getting started. Despite growing interest,... Read more.
Effective giving: Why we research and recommend charities
At the , we want to help people do as much good as possible with their resources. Charitable giving has the power to transform lives—but the evidence is clear:... Read more.
Why early interventions can really matter for lifelong wellbeing
Won’t somebody please think of the children? At the , the highest impact interventions we’ve found so far share one thing in common. They focus on early life... Read more.
Why providing therapy for the world’s poorest isn’t as strange as it sounds
At the , we think that providing free psychotherapy for people with common mental health challenges living in low-income countries is a good idea. In fact, we think... Read more.
What is the best charity to donate to?
If you take away one thing from our chapter in the World Happiness Report, it should be that: Using evidence, it’s now possible to find the best charities at increasing... Read more.
The best charities to donate to could be more than x100 better than expected
How much better are the best charities to donate to compared to the average charity? And how much better do people think they are? The presents new evidence-based... Read more.
The best charity: How Pure Earth saves children from lead exposure
Lead exposure doesn’t often make headlines, but it’s quietly damaging the brains and bodies of 1 in 3 children globally. And despite the scale of harm, efforts... Read more.
9 common questions about giving to charity and doing good
The 2025 World Happiness Report and our chapter on how best to buy happiness for others (i.e., give effectively) were recently released. So we thought it was a... Read more.
Why household name NGOs are unlikely to offer the best value for money
At the , our mission is to find the charities that generate the most happiness for the money donated to them. We do this because we think happiness matters and... Read more.
6 lessons about world happiness from the World Happiness Report
With the release of the 2025 World Happiness Report, the focus has been on the top countries in the rankings. They don’t mention trends except for highlighting... Read more.
The top 25 happiest countries in 2025 plus our 4 favourite findings from the 2025 World Happiness Report
Our friends at the World Happiness Report have just published their 2025 rankings, based on self-reported happiness. We also wrote a chapter for the report! Read... Read more.
Happier Lives Institute responds to Trump administration shutting down USAID
As the only organisation looking to apply wellbeing science to improve happiness globally, we’ve been analysing the recent announcement of USAID funding withdrawal... Read more.
How can we improve? Our 2022 annual impact survey
Your feedback is invaluable to us. We aim to produce rigorous and useful research for decision-makers. In order to do that, it would really help us to know what... Read more.
What we’ve been reading (2022)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.00574.pdfAcademic papers Human wellbeing and machine learning Standard regression models explain surprisingly little of the variation... Read more.
Four prize-winning posts from 2022
Four of our publications have been awarded prizes this year. In this post, we provide a summary of each publication and why the judges rated them so highly. Deworming... Read more.
Our 2022 charity recommendation
Summary Our charity recommendation for 2022 is StrongMinds, a non-profit that provides group psychotherapy for women in Uganda and Zambia who are struggling with... Read more.
Meet our new team members
We’re delighted to welcome three new members to our team: Dr Lily Yu (Grants Strategist) Dr Ryan Dwyer (Senior Researcher) Rachel Strate (Operations Manager) Dr... Read more.
Meet our 2022 Summer Research Fellows
We’re excited to introduce you to our 2022 cohort of summer research fellows. These four talented researchers will be joining us in July and August for a seven-week... Read more.
Our 2021 Annual Review (+ we’re hiring)
Our 2021 Annual Review The cost-effectiveness analyses of cash transfers, psychotherapy, and StrongMinds consumed most of our research capacity in 2021. However,... Read more.
Apply for our 2022 Summer Research Fellowship
We’re excited to announce that we’ll be running our summer research fellowship again this year The fellowship provides students and recent graduates with the... Read more.
What we’ve been reading (2020-21)
Academic papers A local community course that raises wellbeing and pro-sociality: Evidence from a randomised controlled trial Krekel et al. present evidence that... Read more.
Our team continues to grow
We’re delighted to welcome four new members to our team. Samuel Dupret Research Analyst Samuel Dupret will be working with Joel to conduct cost-effectiveness analyses... Read more.
Meet our 2021 Summer Research Fellows
This year, we are running our first Summer Research Fellowship. We received over 60 applications for the eight-week programme and we’re excited to be joined by... Read more.
Apply for our 2021 Summer Research Fellowship
We’re looking for Summer Research Fellows to contribute to our research agenda. You can apply to work on particular projects, such as: Estimating the cost-effectiveness,... Read more.
Our 2020 Annual Review (+ we’re hiring)
2020 ANNUAL REVIEW How is our research making a difference? In 2020, we sought to address the most important questions on our research agenda and to develop our... Read more.
Update on our plans
We recently published an update on our research plans on the Effective Altruism Forum. Our strategy has developed significantly since we published our launch post... Read more.
Our research plan and a new hire
Our research falls into two streams. First, theoretical research into the nature and measurement of subjective well-being (SWB). Priority questions for 2020 include:... Read more.
HLI has hatched: strategy update
The story so far The was formed in late 2018 by a group of committed individuals interested in the subjects of happiness, mental health and effective altruism.... Read more.