FEATURE FIFTY YEARS OF THE ESRC
widely used.” He says: “Public policy sets the overall budgets and the health economics agenda is always about the best use of these resources. Austerity just makes the decisions more stringent.” He adds that while some areas of academic life make efforts to engage policymakers in their work, health economics has been close to policy throughout its existence. Like Layard, Jones thinks that the next priorities for the field are in the world of Big Data. He says: “The ESRC longitudinal data for the UK is very rich and can now be linked to administrative data such as the Hospital Episode Statistics, to socio- economic data, and to genetic and biological data. This could allow us to track a birth cohort into later life and see lifestyle differences, for example in death rates and in conditions such as cancer.” Despite these successes, issues of health, happiness and wellbeing are not straightforward. There are surprisingly sharp disagreements between rival camps even over whether these terms are too fluffy, or too prescriptive, to be useful measures of fulfilment. But it is also clear that these concerns are being
taken seriously around the world. Jones says that health economics varies according to the system it serves, so that in the US, it is more concerned with markets than it is in Europe. But he adds that players such as the World Bank and the World Health Organisation are pushing evidence-based approaches to health in the global south. Professor Layard is involved in work by the OECD to develop a life satisfaction measure that might be used alongside more traditional economic indicators, and adds that mental health and wellbeing may feature in the UN’s forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals. Dr Sarah White, senior lecturer at the University of Bath, is directing an ESRC-DFID-funded research project on Wellbeing and Poverty Pathways in Zambia and India. She has researched international development and wellbeing in South Asia and Africa since 2002, beginning with a big ESRC award of £3.25 million. She says: “I have been trying to ask detailed questions that allow me to put numbers on how people think and feel about their lives.” But she adds: “It is vital to avoid the ‘numbers game’
ESRC longitudinal data for the UK is very rich and can now be linked to administrative data such as Hospital Episode Statistics
and do qualitative research as well. The quantitative approach can be limiting when you want to find how people feel about their lives. In the South, economic wellbeing is of continued importance alongside relationships and more subjective factors. This work shows that it is vital to look at the local context, and not to import your own experience.” The starkest difference between British views on happiness and those that typify the global South are in attitudes to community. White says: “UK replies to questions in this area are about whether individuals feel good about their lives. Elsewhere, people talk about the context in which they live. So if you ask British people whether they help others, they say they regret not doing so, but if you ask
“ i The next priorities for the
health economics field are in the world of Big Data
people in Africa, they say they did not have the means to do so. Partly this is because they have fewer resources, but it is also because they are less taken up with themselves and lack the massive sense of self of that we tend to have in this country.” The lesson, White believes, is that it might be worth thinking more closely about the scale on which research about happiness and wellbeing is applied. “It might make sense,” she says, “for a hospital to care about patient wellbeing. But it might be less feasible to apply these tools at the level of the nation state, because they are derived from findings from individuals and their relationships.” n
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Martin Ince is principal of Martin Ince Communications. He is a freelance science writer, media adviser and media trainer.
For more information:
www.esrc.ac.uk/research/research-topics/health-wellbeing- research
cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/research/wellbeing
www.york.ac.uk/economics/our-people/staff-profiles/ andrew-m-jones/
whatworkswellbeing.org www.esrc.ac.uk/research/major-investments/Big-Data/ www.wellbeingpathways.org
12 SOCIETY NOW SPRING 2015
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