The price of happiness

What makes us happy? According to the testimonies of the people who describe themselves as contented, you need to be highly educated, female, rich, married, self-employed and not middle-aged. The booming discipline of 'happiness studies' continues to cause controversy. Questions abound over cause and effect — for example, are people happier when they marry, or do happy people marry?

One of the most controversial topics for those measuring happiness is its relationship to income. Most people would agree that poverty is miserable, but the relationship is not clear above that unfortunate state. Because being female or married are all-or-nothing factors, but income is quantitative: if being rich makes you happy, does being richer make you more happy?

In an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA Nobel laureate economist Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Angus Deaton at Princeton University use the US data from the Gallup survey to argue that income continues to impact on our evaluation of 'life satisfaction' as we enter the state of the rich. Although reported well-being generally goes up with income, this relationship stops going up at an income of around $75,000 (about €60,000) a year.

Although some could extract the conclusion that, as The New York Times said, "maybe money buys happiness after all", perhaps better education, secure health provision, lowering of stress, and the nurturing of social and familial relationships offer a greater dividend of smiles.
 Adapted from an article by Philip Ball.