Editor's Letter: The money-happiness nexus

last updated 8 January 2015

Money can’t buy love, but happiness, apparently, does have its price. Several studies in recent years have established a direct link between happiness levels and income—which is not all that surprising, since, if nothing else, money enables us to buy things that can make our lives more comfortable, starting with the necessities. Still, I’ve always found these happiness studies to be a bit, well, depressing. Are we really so shallow that our degree of happiness depends on whether we can afford another pair of designer jeans, a fancy car, or a weekend retreat in the mountains? (That was a rhetorical question.)

But the latest entry in the field—yes, happiness constitutes a field, with conferences and journals—provides a more nuanced assessment of the money-happiness nexus. A study of more than 136,000 people in 132 countries was the first to differentiate between “life satisfaction”—respondents’ overall sense of how it’s going—and day-to-day emotions like feeling upbeat or blah. It turns out that while there’s a strong correlation between wealth and how we rate our lives, how we actually feel is less tied to money. Instead, researchers found that positive and negative emotions were more linked to psychological and social factors, such as feeling respected, having autonomy, and being connected to supportive friends and communities. “Money can make you feel better in a limited way,” psychologist Barbara Fredrickson tells The Washington Post. “But positive feelings like enjoyment and laughing can do a whole lot more for people.” At a time when wages are stagnant, jobs scarce, and credit tight, this is, indeed, happy news.