All over the world, people who have more money say they are happier. But that might not always be the case, according to a large new global study of the relationship between wealth and happiness. “People have been arguing for a long time about whether money buys happiness, but it’s a bit more contextual than that,” says James Harter, a research psychologist at the Gallup Organization and an author of the study. “There are big differences depending on how you measure well-being.”
“Happy” could mean you think your life is going well overall, as the word has connoted in previous studies. It could mean you smile and laugh a lot in a given day. Or it could just mean you’re not suffering much. The researchers used the Gallup World Poll, representing 96 percent of the planet’s adult population, to look at well-being from multiple angles. More than 136,000 people in 132 countries completed the questionnaire from 2005 to 2006.
It turns out that the kind of happiness money can buy worldwide is a high evaluation of oneself. The more wealth and luxury conveniences, such as televisions and computers, you have, the better you view your life. That rich people think they are happier even if they don’t enjoy themselves more is “not a surprise,” says Carol Graham, a happiness researcher and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The survey framed the self-evaluation question in a global context, asking people to rate their lives on a scale of “worst” to “best possible.” “And somebody in Togo knows the best possible life is not in Togo,” says Graham.
At the lower end of the income scale, money can contribute to feeling less bad: If it gets food in your stomach and a roof over your head, having more will decrease your anger, sadness, worry, and depression. After meeting basic needs, though, money loses the power to soothe—the United States is the richest nation and also populated by the most worriers.
As for actually enjoying oneself? Money is almost no help. The researchers found that social and psychological needs—being treated with respect, having friends, learning new things, doing what you do best, and being able to choose how you spend your time—trump everything else, no matter where you live. “The thing that surprised me most was how consistent some of these patterns were across different parts of the world,” Harter says.
Graham’s own research reveals similar trends. People in Afghanistan are happier than the world average; and “after having enough food to eat, the most important thing to Latin Americans’ happiness is having a friend or family member they can fall back on in times of need,” Graham says. Although it’s true that people in developing countries have the social and psychological means to be as chipper as New Zealanders (who scored first in positive feelings), happiness may not be an appropriate goal for development. “People make do with what they’ve got,” Graham says. “They adapt to prosperity and they also adapt to adversity. … People in Kenya are as satisfied with their health as people in the United States, even though objective standards are moons apart.”
Ed Diener, Weiting Ng, James Harter, et al., “Wealth and Happiness Across the World: Material Prosperity Predicts Life Evaluation, Whereas Psychosocial Prosperity Predicts Positive Feeling,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 2010.
Read more stories by Jessica Ruvinsky.