Economists and psychologists and the rest of us have long debated whether more money would be pleased. Here is the answer.
Sharon Begley
Newsweek Exclusive on the Internet
15th October 2007 | Updated: 8:41 PM AND 14 Oct, 2007

Broadly, it was probably a mistake looking for the answer to the old question “Is the money to buy happiness?” Of persons who are the so-called dismal science. For economists, when asked, they started from the observation that if people try something sells them, for them, as they can, and if people buy something they try to pay them for less than possible. The two parties, the economists found, are to act as if they were satisfied (happy, dare we say) if they wound up receiving more money (the seller) or to operate in more money (the buyer). So, more money is better than less, and the only way, more can be somewhat better than less, if it brings you more satisfaction. The economists conclusion: the more money you happiest, you need to.

Start depressed, suicidal, head of the directorate, pathetic and other unhappy rich tycoons are not the only ones which lie in this context. “The psychologists have for decades studied the relationship between wealth and happiness,” writes psychologist from Harvard University Daniel Gilbert in his bestseller “Fitness: fat,” “and they have generally concluded that wealth increases happiness of the people, if it excludes people from poverty and in the middle, but it does not contribute to increase as a result of luck. ”

This contradicts the intuition of economic theory. According to the standard economy, the most important, you can use the wealth of additional choice. If you have $ 20 in your pocket, you can remove the steak and peanut butter for dinner, but if you only $ 1, you better hope you already have a jelly jar in the house. Additional wealth, you can also meet other needs and desires, and of those that you meet so happy thou shalt be.

The problem is, the election is not yet everything is to be cracked. The studies show that people like the choice of perhaps half a dozen types of noodles with grocers, but found 27 huge selection, they are on the edge of chronic they had it better than they have. And wants, it’s nice to be able to have the bad habit of needs (iPod, anyone?), The advertising and media culture to create fully numbers without end. Satisfying the needs and takes less than emotional wellbeing wants satisfactory.

The non-linear, how much happiness money can buy much-more luck if it is for you and misery in the middle class comfort, hardly more if it lifts Millionaire decamillionaire to-come clearly into investigations, the people, as they believe the content of their lives. In a typical study people will be invited to their sense of wellbeing and happiness on a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 means “not at all satisfied with my life” and 7 means “completely satisfied.” De l ‘American multi-millionaires who have responded, the result was fortunate average of 5.8. People without residence in Calcutta came to 2.9. But before you that the money does not buy happiness, after all, who other than himself by 5.8 rated: the Inuit in northern Greenland, which is not quite a life of luxury, and the breeding Masai from Kenya, whose feces s cabins have no electricity nor running water. Gilbert and prove the point to buy the happiness that money if it lifts out of extreme poverty, those living in the slums of Calcutta and a pole above the rate to 4.6 themselves homeless.

Studies to monitor the changes in population on happiness over time was also a death knell for the money buys happiness complaint. Since the Second World War, the gross domestic product per capita has tripled in the United States. But the feeling of wellbeing, as measured by surveys, a variant of “On the whole, how satisfied are you with your life?” A little moved. Japan has an even higher meteoric GDP per capita since his plight after the war, but the luck was in national courts, as they were also in Western Europe during its long boom in the postwar period, in function of social psychologists Ruuti Veenhoven of Erasmus University Rotterdam . In 2004, analyzed more than 150 studies on wealth and happiness to the conclusion that “the economic indicators have serious deficiencies”, the estimates of well-being among nations, writes Ed Diener of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Martin EP Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania. “Although the economic production increased in recent decades, there has been no increase in the satisfaction of life … and there was a significant increase in depression and mistrust.”

It is partly because in a growing economy, where former luxury such as washing machines will need the new rich do not believe the joy, a machine to do the laundry that their grandparents, suddenly releasing washboard, has done. They come to the purchase of Maytag. “The Americans win the $ 50000 per year are much happier than those who win $ 10000 per year,” Gilbert writes, “but the Americans win the 5 million U.S. dollars per year are not much happier than the $ 100,000 win per year. ” Another reason is that the expansion of the salary, especially in a growing economy, the expansion of product preferences and the sense that there is still a matter of more cool there must necessarily have one. “The economic success is less than one measurement of welfare, partly because of materialism may have a negative impact on the well-being,” Diener and Seligman conclude.

If the money is not happiness, what is? Grandmother was right when she said to the value of health and his friends, no money and property. Or, as Diener and Seligman said, if your basic needs are met, “the disparities of wealth, less frequently due to income, and are often due to factors such as social relationships and respect for the work.” Other researchers add achievement, the feeling that life has any meaning, in the possession of civilians and other groups, and live in a democracy, the rights of the person and the rule of law. If a nation wishes to the people the feeling of wellbeing, says Veenhoven should be “less investment in the growth of the economy and the policy of promoting good governance, freedom, democracy, trust and public safety.”

(An interesting fact is that money is not happiness, the happiness money can buy. The young people who describe how happy win rule higher incomes, years later than those who have said that they were not satisfied. It seems that a feeling of wellbeing can tell you more productive and likely to take initiative and other characteristics, resulting in a higher income. satisfied are also people who to marry and stay married, and to be healthy, both in terms of increased happiness.)

If more money is not more happiness, and then the behavior of most Americans seems almost crazy that we work harder and, after ten years, for the fattening of our W-2. But that is nonsense for a single person is of crucial importance for an economy that is ever more growth and consumption. Gilbert still: “The savings can develop and flourish if people are misled to believe that the production of wealth will be happy to … make the economy prosper, and if people seek, but only because the people themselves for their own happiness, it is important that they believe wrongly that production and consumption patterns of infrastructure personal well-being. “In other words, if you have your share for economy of the country, forget everything, about what money does not buy that Happiness.