Happiness: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Daniel M. Haybron

Author:Daniel M. Haybron [Haybron, Daniel M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2013-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

Money: the cost of happiness

As I noted at the start of this chapter, there is no fixed amount of ‘importance’ of money for human happiness. Even if money were really important for happiness at all incomes today, it wouldn’t follow that we should strive for more money. Maybe we should. Or maybe we should try to change our economic arrangements or personal priorities, in turn changing the role of material wealth in our lives. Maybe we should try to make money less important to us.

The point is not that money is a bad thing. On the contrary. It’s that we shouldn’t underestimate our options. Findings about the money–happiness relationship don’t settle what we should do: we can accept that relationship and pursue happiness accordingly. Or we can change that relationship: we can decide, to some extent, how important to make money for happiness. The cost of happiness is not fixed.

Writer James Martin, for example, abandoned a lucrative but gruelling career at GE and took a vow of poverty, becoming a much happier Jesuit priest. In so doing, he radically changed the importance of money in his life. His choice obviously isn’t for everyone, but it illustrates the kind of control we have in this matter.

That said, we do have many studies on the relationship between money and happiness in the world as it is today. In a nutshell, the message is this: for the poorer members of a country, money seems to have a fairly strong impact on happiness. But above a certain point, the relationship is quite weak. In the United States, happiness and income show a pretty substantial link until about $75,000 household income, above which the lines for emotional well-being go more or less flat: on average, the impact above that point is roughly zero. (See Figure 10.) In places with a lower cost of living, the point of negligible returns may be lower. A study in Monterrey, Mexico found no increase in self-reported happiness for a family of four above an income of just $4,000 a year. Looking worldwide, the relationship between income and happiness appears generally to be weak. This may be partly because poorer people tend to live in poorer countries, where it takes less income to meet basic needs.

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