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Does ageism begin at 25?

Wellbeing is increasingly an important goal for policy makers, and for people. As the economist Richard Layard pointed out in his book on happiness, “Most people want more income and strive for it. Yet as Western societies have got richer, their people have become no happier”.

A small mountain of evidence – from levels of suicide and depression to survey findings – show that Layard has got it right. What makes people happier, and more satisfied with life, is not income. Once we have reached a certain level of material comfort, most of us find our pleasures elsewhere – among family, friends, communities, and organisations, and from our health and ability to survive challenges. Even our work delivers more than a wage, with people regularly reporting that their working environment is an important factor in how satisfied they are with life.

And at a time of crisis and increasing unemployment, it is important to remember what undermines wellbeing. The most important factor seems to be a loss of control over important areas of life. People who experience long-term unemployment suffer the penalties, such as lower wages and higher levels of depression, for long after they have started work again. People facing unmanageable debt are particularly prone to mental illness. Loneliness and isolation make life miserable for many older adults as well as those in the deepest poverty, removing the sources of social support that the rest of us draw on at times of trouble.

How do we improve people’s resilience and sense of agency? I was asked last year to look at happiness and wellbeing as part of the work programme for the National Inquiry on the Future of Lifelong Learning. I surveyed a massive amount of research on the relationship between adult learning and wellbeing, and on the relationship between adult learning and happiness. So far as happiness is concerned, there isn’t much to report. Although the best educated are usually happier, this relationship disappears once you take out other factors such as job satisfaction, secure employment and good social connections. So education doesn’t necessarily affect your happiness either way, other than by improving your employability (this is clearly provable) and your ability to connect with a wide range of other people (which is also supported by the research).

But learning does have a clear and positive relationship with wellbeing. It has a direct impact on people’s sense of agency: statistical studies, observational research and interviews all show that people who take up learning as adults become more confident and more purposive about the future. It also improves people’s resilience, making them more resourceful and more likely to take action if faced by trouble.

Adult learning also has an indirect impact on wellbeing. Evidence from research on adults’ lives over time shows that people who take courses are, all other things being equal, more likely to find relatively secure jobs. They are also more likely to join voluntary organisations and clubs of all kinds, as well as taking a greater interest in public issues – and are more likely to believe that they themselves can influence public decisions. There is even evidence of a small but increasingly well-documented impact on health-related behaviours, such as participation in screening programmes, taking more exercise, and even quitting smoking.

This is important evidence, and it suggests that adult learning should be a key priority for Government. After all, the Government has started to put wellbeing on its agenda for all sorts of services and agencies. It features strongly in the Communities in Control White Paper, as well as in other related initiatives such as Every Child Matters, the welfare reform initiatives, and the forthcoming policies for older adults. Yet as a nation we tend to think of education as something best done by – or rather to – the young. Adult learning is increasingly seen as a private concern.

Strangely, given their interest in wellbeing, current Government policies are reinforcing this tendency. Alistair Darling’s budget pledge of a job or training for all was limited to unemployed people under 25, despite all the evidence of serious and lasting damage to the older unemployed. Post-school education spending has been increasingly concentrated on gaining low-level vocational qualifications, which are not much use to people already in work, and are no use at all to people outside the labour market. Funds have been steadily withdrawn from local adult education, and changes to the funding of part time higher education have all but killed off the university extra mural tradition.

Many adults have lost out as a result. The hardest hit, of course, are as ever the most vulnerable. In particular, these changes have struck hard at the oldest members of society, who also have most to lose. Active participation in learning has a demonstrable and significant impact on well-being in later life, not simply in helping maintain independence and resilience, but even in inhibiting some of the most unpleasant aspects of cognitive decline. The Government White Paper on ‘informal adult learning’ has sent some encouraging signals, but so far there is no sign that we are about to reverse the damage of the last ten years.

My own conclusion, after reviewing the wide range of evidence that is now available, was that adult education is too important to be left to educationists. It should become a core concern for people promoting regeneration and supporting the most vulnerable communities, for people working in public and community health (including mental health) and for all those concerned with maintaining independence and dignity in later life. And rather than focusing primarily on economic growth as the main aim of education (for all ages), I believe that we should be designing an education system whose main ‘outputs’ are social capital and wellbeing.

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