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The relationship between money and happiness

The relationship between money and happiness

March 29, 2024

Happiness is related to money . It's that simple, but with nuances. Some authors rush to assert that "money is not everything" or that "does not buy happiness". The first one could accept it, the second one needs an explanation. Established the connection between salary and personal well-being, experts suggest that there are levels and ranges of income to measure to what extent this is true.

On the other hand, if money is happiness, to what extent does income affect it? Is there any income limit that can not increase that happiness? A work published in the journal Nature reveals some curiosities. However, some psychologists, such as the American Charles Whitehead, remain skeptical about this issue and deny the conclusions of the study that will be discussed below.


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Money does not buy happiness?

Socially is more than accepted that money does not give happiness. Moreover, in 2010 a study was published by the University of Victoria (New Zealand) that affirms, in effect, that money was equal to well-being but that, in no way, was it capable of "buying" doses of happiness. In this study, almost 500,000 interviews were conducted from some 70 countries around the globe. The conclusions were that Freedom and free time are above cumulative wealth when it comes to providing well-being.

Some believe that this was a deliberate study to calm the masses in times of economic crisis and a decline in the purchasing power of citizens worldwide. To put it in some way, this study was an emotional relief for those groups that were convinced that the Bill Gates and Amancios Ortega lived happier.


Well, they were not so wrong. Another joint study between Harvard University and Columbia (USA) contradicts the research of his ocean colleagues. It is more a semantic question. Money does not buy happiness, true, but it does helps to be able to invest in it in free time . What unequivocally distinguishes happy people from unhappy people is the time variable. If we have good income and we know how to manage leisure time with working life, we can have many more chances of being happy, while the population with less money has to accept precarious jobs of many hours or moonlighting in order to survive.

The problem is that conversely, the same does not happen. If we have little money but a lot of free time we can not invest in our well-being , we do not have enough resources to take advantage of free time. The logic is the following: the times without obligations minimize the effects of stress and anxiety, which increases happiness.


The limits between the money versus happiness relationship

To determine the correlation between happiness and money, sociologists and expert researchers in American human behavior Andrew T. Jebb, Louis Tay, Ed Diener and Shigehiro Oishi, conducted their study using the Gallup method. The Gallup Organization is specifically responsible for measuring, analyzing and studying the behavior of individuals to resolve issues of concern to society in general.

Having chosen the Gallup World Poll, the authors based themselves on a panel of 2 million people from around the world, controlling demographic factors that determine the income by area in which the data collection is done, in a random way to reduce the maximum any type of bias After the study, an enlightening result has been obtained: there is a threshold from which to earn more money does not provide more happiness. This limit ranges between $ 60,000 and 90,000 annual The figures that exceed that amount, are unable to generate more happiness or emotional stability.

Free time, unknown factor

Being a topic of extreme complexity to draw exact conclusions, each author who intervenes in this type of studies or research, tries to collect different variables and statements to support a more realistic thesis. For this, both Elizabeth Dunn, collaborator of the research of Columbia University, and Louis Tay, agree that the time factor is the mother of all unknowns

A parallel study was carried out to be able to specify this thesis. With a smaller number of participants, just over a thousand of them (and only in the United States), well-off people, billionaires and middle- or lower-middle class people were grouped, and more than half of the respondents said no. know about the advantage of investing in reducing stress by discharging other responsibilities that implies having more time for them.


Does More Money Equal More Happiness? (March 2024).


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