Viewing archives for Prof. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve

2024 UK Wellbeing Report

Maria Cotofan, Richard Layard, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, and Sarah Cunningham

Abstract

Understanding the levels, the distribution, and the evolution of wellbeing across places is of paramount importance to the individuals living in them, to their broader communities, and to policymakers looking to improve the wellbeing of people. In this report we investigate how wellbeing has evolved across the UK over the last decade and show that positive trends in the first part of our time series have been partly reversed following Contents Context Data and Methods Descriptive Statistics the Covid-19 Pandemic. We show this in terms of both Life Satisfaction and the share of people experiencing particularly low levels of wellbeing. We refer to the latter as the share living below the Happiness Poverty Line, a group making up roughly 1 in 8 people across the UK. We find that there is significant variation in both these measures across areas, with some places becoming happier over time but many still lagging behind.

2025 UK Wellbeing Report

Maria Cotofan, Richard Layard, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Sarah Cunningham, and Ben Wealthy

Abstract

Using new data and building on last year’s report we investigate how three measures of wellbeing, namely (1) average life satisfaction, the (2) share of people living with low levels of wellbeing, and the (3) share of people living with high levels of wellbeing, have evolved across UK areas and over the past decade. Using 11 waves of data from the Annual Population Survey we show how these trends have changed across the four countries, across Local Authority Districts, in major cities, and in rural and urban areas. We find that while wellbeing has broadly stagnated at the national level, there is substantial inequality across places and the communities that live there, with some areas flourishing while others increasingly lag behind. The implications for policymakers are substantial.

Author Talks: Are your employees happy at work?

McKinsey & Company

In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey’s Vanessa Burke chats with Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, about Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters: The Science Behind Employee Happiness and Organizational Performance (Harvard Business Review Press, Spring 2025), coauthored with INSEAD assistant professor George Ward. De Neve shares data analysis on the feelings and motivations of millions of job seekers and identifies key drivers that influence their workplace well-being. He explains why workplace well-being varies across companies and provides evidence-based ideas for business leaders who seek to improve productivity, recruitment, and retention.

Acts of kindness can make you happier and healthier, researchers say

CNBC

“People consistently and universally underestimate the kindness of others,” says Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, editor of the report and director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. But the truth is, it happens more often than people realize.

“In the United States, only 30% of people think the wallet will be returned when lost,” says De Neve. “The reality is about 60% of wallets get returned when lost.”

Are young people today really the saddest generation of the modern era?

Daily Telegraph

One of those studies is the World Happiness Report, produced by a team that includes Prof Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, the director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. He agrees with Prof Duffy. Across the western world, the happiness benefit that comes with youth “has really disappeared in today’s generation,” he says. The extent of the change is the most obvious in children currently at school, where “that first leg of the U-curve where people report being happiest in their teens is literally gone”. People in their 20s, meanwhile, are “living their midlife crises right now”. Someone my age is about as happy as the average 45-year-old was in the year 2000, Prof De Neve estimates.

Welcome to the ‘antisocial century’: Are we lonelier now than ever?

El País

It’s not a decision without consequences. For Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, professor of economics and well-being at the University of Oxford and one of the index’s editors, “there is a very direct correlation between loneliness and unhappiness.” Furthermore, self-imposed loneliness, no matter how much it may seem to respond to an individual or generational trend and, therefore, may seem “short-term satisfying,” is a source of emotional imbalance and loss of well-being.

The happiest countries in the world, according to De Neve, continue to be Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. That is, precisely those where, among many other factors, the loneliness epidemic seems to have progressed the least in recent years.

How companies can improve workplace wellbeing in the Intelligent Age – and why it matters

World Economic Forum

The world of work for many people in 2025 “isn’t necessarily a positive place,” says Jan-Emmanuel De Neve.

Five years after the COVID pandemic increased the focus on mental health and wellbeing at work, “the pendulum is swinging back” to a pre-COVID era, the Oxford Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science believes, with a shift away from the human case for investing in workplace wellbeing.

Eating lunch and dinner with others brings an ‘uptick in life satisfaction’—here’s how many meals you should share each week

CNBC

In Senegal, out of 14 lunches and dinners per week, people share 11.7 meals, according to the 2025 World Happiness Report. In Sweden, people share 9.5 meals per week, in the U.S. people share 7.9 meals per week and in Japan, people share 3.7 meals per week.

And it turns out the number of meals you eat with others has an effect on your overall wellbeing. In fact, “there’s an optimal level of social eating,” says Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, editor of the report and director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford.

Finland Says It Can Teach Tourists to Be Happy. Challenge Accepted.

The New York Times

I had come to Finland to see whether I could bring happiness back to America with me. Finland has topped the World Happiness Report for the past eight years, a merit largely attributed to the Nordic welfare state, trust in the government, and public policies like free education and universal health care. Under these criteria, living in the United States (No. 24 on the list) is practically a recipe for misery. But the Finns also find contentment in more attainable ways, such as their close relationship with nature (74 percent of the country is covered by forest) and visiting the sauna daily (there are three million saunas for a population of 5.5 million).

America’s happiness crisis is a generational divide

Salon

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve also provides some hope in this global era of crisis, great anxiety and dread. He explains that the 2025 World Happiness Survey shows that people across the world are generally much kinder and caring than is commonly believed.