The Relationship Between Money and Well-Being

    Welcome back readers! In my previous post, I discussed a study done by Kahneman and Deaton. This study elaborated on two topics that are important to consider when analyzing one's happiness: life evaluation and emotional well-being. In this post, I am going to dive deeper into this topic and discuss how money and wealth relates to these two things. 

    Many of us can agree on the fact that not having to worry about money-related issues would add to our contentment as that would be one less thing to stress over. However, this does not mean having money makes us happy overall. There are many factors that contribute to our happiness, including good relationships, family, community outreach, etc. I am not here to tell you that money cannot make you happy. My point is that while money can contribute to an improved life evaluation and a more content well-being, it is not the key to our happiness. To further elaborate on that statement, I am going to discuss studies completed on this topic. Only a handful of people were studying the relationship between money and happiness back in the 1970s, resulting in little data regarding the topic. However, at that time, research suggested wealthier people tended to be more happy than the less wealthy, but citizens of rich countries were not necessarily much happier than citizens of poor countries. This suggests that having a lot of money is not what contributes to one's emotional well-being, but having what would be considered a lot of money for the region one lives in. More recent studies support this, stating that there is a strong link between the level of economic development within a country and the happiness of that county's citizens. To read more on this topic, view the link (article title: Gross Domestic Happiness) in the resource page of this website.

    After discovering all of this, we cannot say that money and economic stability have no role in contributing to one's happiness, because they do in many instances. However that is not what I am trying to tell you. My point is that money alone cannot make you happy. The article Gross Domestic Happiness from the University of Pennsylvania website helps to prove this, as previously said above: people in wealthier countries are not necessarily happier than those in poor countries. The conditions/economic circumstances of a country also contribute to one's happiness, as those aspects impact one's stress levels. These are just two examples of things other than one's individual wealth that can affect how content a person is. 

Stay tuned for my next post, as we will dive further into other themes that can make one happy.