Money Affects HappinessConventionally, we used to hear the saying, "Money can't buy happiness.". Is it really true? Let's look at some facts about happiness, money, and life.
Easy to talk about happiness and specific amounts of it, but how do we measure happiness in real life? It isn’t something we perceptibly see in a computer game. In fact, it is more like a feeling and believe it or not, there are ways to measure it.
How To Measure Happiness?
As we look at the behavioral aspect, when we feel happy our behaviors change. We smile more and feel much more energetic. Hence we might be much more patient and helpful to others. However, any external factors can affect our happiness, which simultaneously affects our behaviors such as sun, exercising, eating, etc. Other than our behaviors, there are some biological ways to assess and reveal people's happiness levels in laboratories, but these are way too scientific. Reports, on the other hand, are another helpful source of information. In Particular, we can consider self-reports of people about their emotions and the feedback from other people. For example, as a parent, brief information about their child's emotional state to another person is valuable feedback. Of course, this data is mostly based on a person's emotional well-being, but it is also helping researchers carry out certain types of studies.
Attitudes Towards Money
For most people, the relationship with money, happiness, and living standards compose complicated relationships. It isn't like something that turns off when they achieve a certain amount of wage per year. They want more. Therefore, they try to find ways to earn more, usually by advancing in their career, which results in economic growth on a societal basis. On the other hand, things may lead in a different direction. More income means more flexibility on living expenses. However, with the pandemic, things started to change dimensions. The pandemic was actually the emergence of some crises. Some people lost their jobs or gave up what they love for the sake of themselves and their loved ones. Thus, the pandemic started a new pursuit to make money in challenging times. So happiness had to be put away from people in order to survive. For some people, money might be the indicator of success. In that case, if you are not earning much from your current job, you might think, "Am I not successful enough?" That creates a twisted sense of success and affects the lives of many. For some other people, however, only the job they are performing gives their lives a purpose that brings happiness simultaneously. As you can see, "money" can be determined in many ways depending on the person.
Killingworth's Study
In this post, I will also talk about a study by Matthew Killingworth. This research was conducted to measure people's well-being by collecting data from them on a daily basis. Actually, it has an extremely interesting content-collecting process. At some point, he links people's happiness with their income, as I mentioned before.
According to a paper from 2010 by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, well-being stops increasing after achieving a $75,000 annual salary. In his study, Killingworth declares that the possibility of increasing well-being stops after some time. This is since money no longer means something. However, he suggests well-being continues to increase with income as it can also give some satisfaction even just to see the ability to make "more" money.
Following on the study, Killingworth highlights that people earning more are happier. This derives from their high income and the possibility of doing things without doubt and worry. Who wouldn't be pleased by not caring about money while doing things they want to do? On the other side of the story, working excessively to earn more brings problems such as depression. People who link their self-worth with their income most definitely suffer from stress and, even more, depression. So, the key is trying to keep everything at proper and healthy levels. For example, the passion of earning more or dreaming about an alternative life that comes with more money.
