03 Apr Research suggests the link between income and happiness is not what many think
In the many, many interviews I've done over the last decade or so about happiness one of the most common questions I'm asked is along the lines of…
…does money buy happiness?
And we all know the cliched answer is…NO!
But this is not just a cliche, this is a valid response based on much research although it should be noted that the relationship money/income/wealth and happiness is more complex than can be reflected in a one word answer.
Neverthless, the simple answer is that other factors are more powerful and direct contributors to our happiness and wellbeing and this is, not surprisingly, an important finding for us all to understand (if we want to live happy and good lives).
So it is, with this in mind, that I share with you today some recent research conducted in this area…
DESPITE global economic gloom, the world is a happier place than it was before the financial crisis began. That is the counterintuitive conclusion of a poll of 19,000 adults in 24 countries by Ipsos, a research company. Some 77% of respondents now describe themselves as happy, up three points on 2007, the last year before the crisis. Fully 22% (up from 20%) describe themselves as very happy—a more important measure, says Ipsos’s John Wright, since whenever three-quarters of people agree on anything, “you need to pay attention to intensity in the results.”
All such polls come with a health warning. The level of happiness is self-reported—and the term means different things to different people. The Ipsos poll, measuring degrees of happiness, is not strictly comparable with those that ask about “well-being” (such as Gallup) or “life satisfaction” (the World Values survey), so it is hard to test the validity of the conclusions against other efforts. The margin of error is wide, at plus or minus 3.1 points for most countries. Still, Ipsos has been doing its survey regularly for five years and the figures have proved fairly stable during that time, not wildly volatile which they would have been if they had been flaky…
…CLICK HERE to read the full and original article and then feel free to post your opinions about the relationship between money and happiness HERE on The Happiness Institute's Facebook Page : )