Will Wilkinson - Latest Comments in Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All

Re: Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All

masha — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:14:02 -0000

has anybody ever thought it could be the opposite: happy people work harder, are more positive in life and make more money?

Re: Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All

Joey Staudt — Sun, 04 May 2008 13:24:41 -0000

Is there a good book or paper summarizing the current literature on happiness?

Re: Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All

conchis — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:14:03 -0000

Anon,

The short answer is yes, sort of. Income (earning money) appears to have a distinct effect from wealth (having money), or consumption (spending money/having stuff). But it's not entirely clear whether this effect is because people get self-esteem from the act of earning or because, to the extent that individuals' current income is a signal of their future income, it provides them with a sense of security about their futures. Probably a little of both.

Re: Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All

conchis — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:04:04 -0000

Upon seeing a flat trend in average happiness over time as average income rises, you’d think the right thing to do would be to ask what is wrong with THAT measure. A ceiling effect? Scale renorming as expectations rise? But no. The measure that suggests income growth really does us no good, that must be right. So let’s hold that fixed and then try to explain away the significance of the strong within-country correlation by making up ill-supported just-so stories about zero-sum status races.

Sorry Will, but this is just crap. I'm as glad as anyone else that improved data are now giving us a better picture of what's going on here, and as frustrated as anyone else that a lot of the holes in the Easterlin result haven't gotten as much attention as they deserve. But just because the beliefs conducive to your political views are now being vindicated, doesn't mean it was obvious all along that you were right and they were wrong, or that the theories that were developed to explain the paradox are as silly as you seem to imply.

Comparison effects and adaptation were perfectly legitimate as potential explanations of the Easterlin result. So, if you're going to start throwing stones about people ignoring legitimate hypotheses on the basis of political convenience, you might want to step outside that glass house first. In fact, there is still very good individual-level evidence for comparison effects (the evidence for adaptation strikes me as more ambiguous). Just because such effects don't render money irrelevant to SWB, doesn't mean they're not important.

Moreover, to the extent that the "new" results are based simply on better data, they seem to give little credence to your "ceiling effect" or "scale renorming" hypotheses --- which would suggest that your gloating is even less justified. You might have been right, but not for any reason you deserve credit for.

P.S. Apologies for the snarky tone, but it's no worse than yours in this post.

Re: Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All

GilM — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:49:55 -0000

I'm sure some will say that the rich are happier because they have the awesome opportunity to pay more taxes, and that makes them feel better.

They'll be glad to continue to expand this opportunity for all of us.

Re: Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All

Anon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:11:40 -0000

I have a tangential question, though admittedly I'm not confident it's relevant. The data suggest a positive correlation between income and happiness, and from this we conclude that money can indeed buy happiness, etc...

But, at the individual rather than national level, I wonder if there's a differing impact on happiness between earning money and simply having it. Yes, I realize that for most people it's the same thing, as higher-earning people will over time build up more net worth than peers lower on the income scale.

But not for all. Younger high-earners, for instance, can have less wealth than older people who may earn less. Is there a difference between their happiness levels?

Or, holding other variables constant, how about two people of roughly similar age with the same net worth--but one earned all of her money and another was given part of it?

I guess I'm just asking if the act of making money (perhaps because of the esteem-reinforcing value-creation it implies) affects happiness differently than having money given to you. Is there any evidence one way or the other?

Thanks, I very much enjoy this blog.

Re: Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All

"Q" the Enchanter — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:44:45 -0000

I always like Michael Caine's remark: "I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better." (Sophie Tucker said much the same sort of thing back in the '40s.)