According to this article, yes and no.
Does money buy happiness? It's sometimes said that scientists have found no relationship between money and happiness, but that's a myth, says University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener.
The connection is complex, he says. But in fact, very rich people rate substantially higher in satisfaction with life than very poor people do, even within wealthy nations, he says.
"There is overwhelming evidence that money buys happiness," said economist Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England. The main debate, he said, is how strong the effect is.
Whenever I see a statement like this, I always want the definitions. What is "overwhelming evidence"? What's "happiness"? And who decides which is which?
Oswald recently reported a study of Britons who won between $2,000 and $250,000 in a lottery. As a group, they showed a boost in happiness averaging a bit more than 1 point on a 36-point scale when surveyed two years after their win, compared to their levels two years before they won.
To me, one point isn't "overwhelming evidence" of greater happiness. Maybe the lottery winners just got to do a few more of the things they had always wanted to do. To me, a lot of things could make a one-point difference on a happiness scale. Like having children. Or getting a job you really like. Or finishing school. Or getting married.
But, of course, there are other scientists saying that money doesn't necessarily buy happiness.
Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-Prize winner and Princeton economist, and colleagues recently declared that the notion that making a lot of money will produce good overall mood is "mostly illusory."
They noted that in one study, people with household incomes of $90,000 or more were only slightly more likely to call themselves "very happy" overall than were people from households making $50,000 to $89,999. The rates were 43 percent versus 42 percent, respectively. (Members of the high-income group were almost twice as likely to call themselves "very happy" as people from households with incomes below $20,000.)
But other studies, rather than asking for a summary estimate of happiness, follow people through the day and repeatedly record their feelings. These studies show less effect of income on happiness, Kahneman and colleagues said.
There is still another twist to the money-happiness story. Even though people who make $150,000 are considerably happier than those who make $40,000, it's not clear why, says psychologist Richard E. Lucas of Michigan State University.
I can see why a person who was poor might not be as happy as someone who is rich. After all, the rich person can (supposedly) have anything they want. On the other hand, the rich person usually has a lot more stress because of the possibility of losing everything, as well as what that person is doing to get the money (high-powered careers).
On the other hand, I can also see why a person who was poor might be just as happy as someone who is rich, if their happiness is based on factors not related to money. I've had very little money in my life and I've had quite a bit of money in my life and, for me, money was never the factor that made me happy or not. Certainly money can make life easier (like if your car breaks down or you need to see a doctor), but most people I've known who were happy found their happiness in places other than money. They might get it through family, religion, or other things.
This article was interesting as far as it went, but it really didn't tackle any new ground (like a lot of these sorts of stories). I would have been more impressed if it had gone into a lot more depth about how the scientists measured satisfaction and what people in different income groups used to measure their own happiness. That would probably mean a lot more.
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