MONEY AND HAPPINESS

Money and Happiness

Abstract

In this study we try to explore the concept of “Money and Happiness” in a holistic context. The main focus of the research is on “money” and its relation with “happiness”. The research also analyzes many aspects of “money” and tries to gauge its effect on “happiness”. Finally the research describes various factors which are responsible for “happiness” and tries to describe the overall effect of “money” on “happiness”.Money and Happiness

Introduction

Twenty years ago, Richard Easterlin argued that more developed societies were no happier than the poorest. However, Easterlin argued, within any nation, the richer people are happier than poorer. He explained this contradiction as follows: people evaluate their economic welfare in terms of its neighbors. If only there was an increase in national income, social status of an individual with respect to its neighbor remains unchanged.

The relationship between money and happiness is complex. Decades of studies suggest that money can buy happiness, but only a little bit and only up to a point. So the correlation between money and happiness is modest (Wallace, Ruth and Alison, 2006). Many of us think we should get more happiness for our money. After all, wealth can buy lots of the ingredients of a happy life: better nutrition and health, more meaningful work, more freedom, and more time with family and friends. Since money leads to those things, why do not wealth increases connect more strongly to happiness?

According to (Gardner, Jonathan and Oswald, 2007) we miss our chance for buying happiness by making purchases we think will make us happy but do not. The article covers eight principles for spending to maximize happiness. One is purchasing small pleasures.

With regard to differences in wealth within each country, there has also been a material change. Among wealthy nations has been a revolution of values. Both in Europe and the United States, young people who grew up in an era of peace and prosperity tend to become adults, to give less value to money than those who grew up during a period of depression or during the Second World War. Instead, give greater importance to self-determination (also in the workplace) and cultural expression. For this group of relatively prosperous post-materialist, money does not buy happiness (DeSalvo and Louise, 1999).

In those nations where the economy has grown dramatically, its citizens have experienced the same leap. The study gives the example of Japan, where per capita income increased fivefold between 1958 and 1991, from 3,000 to $ 15,000 per year, but happiness levels remained between 2.5 and 3 (on four) along these three decades.

The report speaks of two types of goods: the basics such as eating, relaxing or with friends, which are basic and pleasure lasts forever, and consumer-goods consumption as a car or a trip abroad-to you get used to the faster than expected and, therefore, the ecstasy is short. "They are adaptive," he says. Money can buy most, but the material goods that last less.

So who is happiest in welfare focused commodity and not the ...