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Part - IV

That said, a vast array of individuals seriously over-rate the importance of money in making themselves, and others, happy. Indeed, it seems to me that an awful lot of individuals within our industry tend to equate money with happiness.

However, study after study from psychology shows that money doesn’t equal happiness. For instance, Loewenstein (1996) asked visitors to Pittsburgh International Airport to rank from 1 (most important) to 5 (least important) a list of "things that might be important when it comes to making people happy". They were then asked to assign percentages as to the importance of each factor in determining overall happiness. The table below shows the mean ranking and percentage weights that respondents assigned to each variable. High income received the lowest ranking and rating.

A similar finding is contained by Diener and Oishi (2000) * who surveyed some 7167 students across 41 countries. Those who valued love more than money reported far higher life satisfaction scores than those who seemed to be money focused. (See chart p5).

However, for all the emphasis that gets put upon life circumstances as a generator of happiness, the correlations between such variables as money, job security, marriage etc and happiness are relatively small. In fact, Sheldon et al argue that in total all circumstances account for only around 10% of the variations in people’s happiness.

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* Diener, E and Oishi, S (2000) Money and Happiness: Income and subjective well-being across nations.

Source: The Net