06 Jul Money’s only part of the answer for happiness
As he's done so many times before, Ross Gittins, the well known and well qualified economics writer for the Sydney Morning Herald has again, today, clearly and succinctly summed up the relationships between money and happiness.
He begins with the simple question…
…How important is money to enjoying a high quality of life?
And he goes on to write…
The short answer is that once a country reaches a reasonable level of affluence, it's not how much money it has so much as how well it uses what it's got. For the individual, the key is understanding money's limitations.
And he ultimately concludes (basing his thoughts on research findings)…
But the correlation's a lot stronger for the new, poorer members of the organisation than it is for the old, richer members. And this is consistent with the research evidence on subjective wellbeing: rich countries are happier than poor countries, and poor countries get happier as their incomes rise, but once a country joins the other rich nations, having a bit more income than the next country doesn't necessarily mean your people will be happier than theirs…
…The explanation goes partly to the question of how a country (or an individual) uses the money it has, though it may also involve factors that have little to do with money. But it also suggests income suffers heavily from what economists call ''diminishing marginal utility''. The first, say, $15,000 of annual income buys you a lot more wellbeing than the last $15,000 does.
Read the full and original article HERE. It's well worth it because if we can properly understand the real relationship between money and happiness, between income or wealth and living a good life then we're well on the way to know what we can do with that money and how we could live our lives differently to enjoy more happiness and positive emotion.