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Article: Does money buy happiness?
- Article from:
- The Public Interest
- Article date:
- September 22, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 The National Affairs, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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TWENTY YEARS ago in this journal, Richard Easterlin argued that richer societies are no happier than poor ones. However, Easterlin argued, within any one country richer people are happier than poorer people. He explained this anomaly as follows: People judge their economic welfare by that of their neighbors. If only national income rises, an individual's status, vis-a-vis his neighbors, remains unchanged.
But since then, new studies have almost completely reversed Easterlin's conclusions. These studies have found that economic growth does materially increase a country's collective sense of well-being and that differences in well-being within a country are ...