I think this statement by Lord Layard, a very prominent UK economist who has 
the ear of the Government, is very problematic:



What is the biggest single cause of misery in our community? Most people 
would answer 'poverty'. But they would be wrong. If we try to predict who is 
unhappy we find that the strongest predictor is a person's prior mental 
illness. Prior mental illness (ten years earlier) explains more current 
unhappiness than poverty does.

http://cep.lse.ac.uk/textonly/research/mentalhealth/DEPRESSION_REPORT_LAYARD.pdf



He bases this claim on analysis of data from the UK National Child 
Development Study, which has tracked the development of all children born in 
the UK between 3 and 9 March 1958.



In fact, analyses from the National Child Development Study found that 
social class and psychological distress at age 23 were strongly linked 
(Power & Manor 1991), and that financial hardship at the ages of both 23 and 
33 significantly influenced the likelihood of psychological distress at age 
33 (Power et al. 2002).



It seems to me that 'prior mental illness' is inextricably linked to prior 
social disadvantage, and therefore Layard should have acknowledged that 
prior poverty contributed to prior mental illness and therefore contributed 
significantly to current unhappiness.



What do others think?



Thanks

Melissa



Power, C., & Manor, O. (1992). Explaining social class differences in 
psychological health among young adults: a longitudinal perspective. Social 
Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 27(6), 284-291.

Power, C., Stansfeld, S. A., Matthews, S., Manor, O., & Hope, S. (2002). 
Childhood and adulthood risk factors for socio-economic differentials in 
psychological distress: Evidence from the 1958 British Birth Cohort. Social 
Science and Medicine, 55(11), 1989-2004.



Melissa Raven, Adjunct Lecturer
Department of Public Health, Flinders University
GPO Box 2100 ADELAIDE  SA  5001
AUSTRALIA

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