Submitting your "dream public policy" idea

In association with our discussions of policy ideas on May 14 (and, in invitational sessions, on May 21), we invite submissions of brief policy propsals for public policy that could improve lives. These will be shared with all participants at the conference, and will help to inform the panel and attendee discussions.

The suggested criteria for a good policy are:

it is specific / actionable by a government,
it would be prioritized under a life satisfaction lens,
it is lessly likely to be without such evidence
it has sufficient support from the evidence for one to make (tentative) claims about expected improvements to wellbeing

The primary form for submissions is a short video of 1 to 5 minutes in length. You can record it yourself (e.g. using Zoom) and email Chris Barrington-Leigh for a drop-site url, where you can submit it.
Please incorporate your name as part of the name of any file you submit. Please also write to me with your title/affiliation and a suggested title for the video.

Suggested deadline: May 6

If you cannot do a video for some reason, we would still welcome your idea; please submit a short text in your favourite file format to the same site.

Here is a suggested outline for your short video:

state/explain concrete government policy, including expenditure or regulation
explanation of evidence making us think this will improve life satisfaction
honest assessment of size of impact, confidence bounds on that size, and quality of causal inference
conclusion of how the policy is highly cost effective

That's only a suggestion of my preconceived ideal, and it may be a challenge to fit all that in. You are free to deviate, and to keep it simple and brief and even off-the-cuff. Here are our tips for video recording but don't let perfection hold you back. You can even make the recording from your phone if you like. Ideally, please speak in English or French if you can.

In the conference, we will address a few invited policy proposals from life satisfaction researchers in the following four themes:

Children and psychosocial skills
Labour market and workplaces
Urban life and community
Income and consumption

Yours does not have to fit into one of these categories, but if it does, we'll sort it into one of them.

Feel free to contact us with any description, links, or other materials you want associated with your video submission.

Also, you can email us now to let us know your intent or interest to submit something. Or to ask any questions.

Thank you! Feel free to invite colleagues to this page, to submit their videos/ideas, and to register for the live events.