March 2nd, 2008

Money and Happiness

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via Dani Rodrik

In economics we think that happiness increases with lifetime wealth, albeit at a decreasing rate. But recent research on happiness fails to show a steep gradient between incomes and self-reported life satisfaction. But this work has typically focused on rich countries. In a recent paper, Angus Deaton uses Gallup poll data for a large number of countries and uncovers–to my surprise, at least–that people in poor countries are indeed less “happy” on average than people in rich countries.

Here is the relationship, broken down by age group.

happiness.png

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