{"id":55496,"date":"2013-05-23T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2013-05-23T17:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=55496"},"modified":"2013-05-17T19:28:58","modified_gmt":"2013-05-18T00:28:58","slug":"money-doesnt-bring-happiness-a-reconsideration-with-new-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/05\/23\/money-doesnt-bring-happiness-a-reconsideration-with-new-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Money Doesn’t Bring Happiness? A Reconsideration with New Data"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Forty years ago Richard Easterlin proposed the paradox that people in wealthier countries were no happier than those in less wealthy countries.\u00a0 Subsequent research on money and happiness brought modifications and variations, notably that within a single country, while for the poor, more money meant fewer problems, for the wealthier people — those with enough or a bit more — enough is enough.\u00a0 Increasing your income from $100,000 to $200,000 isn\u2019t going to make you happier.<\/p>\n

It was nice to hear researchers singing the same lyrics we\u2019ll soon be hearing in commencement speeches and that you hear in Sunday sermons and pop songs (\u201cthe best things in life are free\u201d; “mo’ money mo’ problems”).\u00a0 But this moral has a sour-grapes taste; it\u2019s a comforting fable we non-wealthy tell ourselves all the while suspecting that it probably isn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n

A recent Brookings paper<\/a>\u00a0by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers adds to that suspicion.\u00a0 Looking at comparisons among countries and within countries, they find that when it comes to happiness, you can never be too rich.<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Stevenson and Wolfers also find no \u201csatiation point,\u201d some amount where happiness levels off despite increases in income.\u00a0 They provide US data from a 2007 Gallup survey:<\/p>\n

\"2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The data are pretty convincing.\u00a0 Even as you go from rich to very rich, the proportion of \u201cvery satisfied\u201d keeps increasing. \u00a0(Sample size in the stratosphere might be a problem: only 8 individuals reported annual incomes over $500,000;100% of them, though, were “very happy.”)<\/p>\n

Did Biggie and Alexis get it wrong?<\/p>\n

Around the time that the Stevenson-Wolfers study was getting attention in the world beyond Brookings, I was having lunch with a friend who sometimes chats with higher ups at places like hedge funds and Goldman Sachs.\u00a0 He hears wheeler dealers complaining about their bonuses. \u201cI only got ten bucks.\u201d\u00a0 Stevenson and Wolfers would predict that this guy\u2019s happiness would be off the charts given the extra $10 million.\u00a0 But he does not sound like a happy master of the universe.<\/p>\n

I think that the difference is more than just the clash of anecdotal and systematic evidence.\u00a0 It\u2019s about defining and measuring happiness.\u00a0 The Stevenson-Wolfers paper uses measures of \u201clife satisfaction.\u201d\u00a0 Some surveys ask people to place themselves on a ladder according to \u201chow you feel about your life.\u201d\u00a0 Others ask<\/p>\n

All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The GSS uses happy instead of satisfied, but the effect is the same:<\/p>\n

Taken all together, how would you say things are these days – would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When people hear these questions, they may think about their lives in a broader context and compare themselves to a wider segment of humanity.\u00a0 I imagine that Goldman trader griping about his \u201cten bucks\u201d was probably thinking of the guy down the hall who got twelve.\u00a0 But when the survey researcher asks him where he is on that ladder, he may take a more global view and recognize that he has little cause for complaint.\u00a0 Yet moment to moment during the day, he may look anything but happy.\u00a0 There\u2019s a difference between \u201caffect\u201d (the preponderance of momentary emotions) and overall life satisfaction.<\/p>\n

Measuring affect is much more difficult — one method requires that people log in several times a day to report how they\u2019re feeling at that moment — but the correlation with income is weaker.<\/p>\n

In any case, it\u2019s nice to know that the rich are benefitting from getting richer.\u00a0 We can stop worrying about their being sad even in their wealthy pleasure and turn our attention elsewhere.\u00a0 We got 99 problems, but the rich ain\u2019t one.<\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog. Forty years ago Richard Easterlin proposed the paradox that people in wealthier countries were no happier than those in less wealthy countries.\u00a0 Subsequent research on money and happiness brought modifications and variations, notably that within a single country, while for the poor, more money meant fewer problems, for the wealthier people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,329,260,274,1813,1811,1772,1776,1777,1784,1816,1819,1821,1824,2078,1799,3920],"class_list":["post-55496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-emotion","tag-international-comparisons","tag-methodsuse-of-data","tag-nation-brazil","tag-nation-britainthe-u-k","tag-nation-china","tag-nation-france","tag-nation-germany","tag-nation-india","tag-nation-iran","tag-nation-italy","tag-nation-japan","tag-nation-mexico","tag-nation-nigeria","tag-nation-russia","tag-nation-united-states"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55496"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55502,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55496\/revisions\/55502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}