Although most people imagine that if they had more money they could do more fun things and perhaps be happier, the reality seems to be that those with higher incomes tend to be tenser, and spend less time on simple leisurely activities.

Scaling bad mood

In 2004, the researchers developed a survey tool that measures people's quality of daily lives. Then they asked 909 employed women to record the previous day's activities and their feelings towards them.

The study focused on women because the researchers wanted to study a homogeneous group while the surveys were in the early developmental stages.

Recently, the researchers revisited the data from the 2004 and focused on correlating the amount of income with the percentage of time each participant reported as being in a bad mood each day.

It was expected that those who made less than $20,000 a year would spend 32 percent more of their time in a bad mood than those that had an annual income greater than $100,000.

In reality, the low-income group spent only 12 percent more time in a bad mood than their wealthier counterparts. This suggests that the link between income and mood has been perhaps overstated.

The researchers once again surveyed another group of women in 2005. In this study, participants not only recorded their overall satisfaction with life but a moment-to-moment account of their contentment.

The results showed that higher income had less of a correlation with momentary happiness than with overall life satisfaction.

"If people have high income, they think they should be satisfied and reflect that in their answers," said study team member Alan Krueger, an economist from Princeton University. "Income, however, matters very little for moment-to-moment experience."

More chores, less fun

Krueger and colleagues also looked at data from a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey to see how people in different income brackets spent their time.

What they found was that those with higher incomes had more chores and less fun.

They devoted more time to working, commuting, childcare, and shopping and were under more stress and tension than those in lower income brackets.

According to government statistics, men who make more than $100,000 a year spend 19.9 percent of their time on passive leisure activities such as watching television and socializing. Meanwhile, men whose annual income were less than $20,000 spent more than 34 percent of their time dedicated to passive leisure.

Although the correlation between income and life satisfaction is weak, people are highly motivated to increase their income. This illusion may lead to more time spent on activities like commuting while sacrificing time spent on socializing, something that people consider amongst the best moments of their daily life, the researchers said in the study.

The scientists are now conducting a national survey with both male and female sample groups.

"It gives me no joy, no satisfaction, no sense of empowerment to do what I'm forced to do here," Corzine said.

Within minutes of Corzine signing the order, road construction projects were required to begin winding down. Motor vehicle offices planned to close at noon. About 45,000 state employees were immediately furloughed. State courts were closed for anything but emergencies.

State-run parks, beaches and historic sites were to be closed by Wednesday but were expected to remain open through the July Fourth holiday.

Services such as state police, prisons, mental hospitals and child welfare were to keep operating. The casinos could be forced to close because they require state monitoring, though the casino industry is challenging a possible closure in court.

A bid by Atlantic City's 12 casinos Friday to get state monitors declared "essential employees" who would stay on the job despite a government shutdown is now before an emergency appellate court panel, casino association lawyer John Kearney said Saturday.

The dispute centers on Corzine's determination to raise the state sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent to help close a $4.5 billion budget deficit.

Corzine sees the increase as a vital step toward providing reliable annual revenue, but most Democrats in the Assembly - the lower house of the state Legislature - and several Senate Democrats say the plan is unnecessary.

Opponents have questioned the need for a sales tax increase, predicting voter backlash and demanding that any increase be reserved for property tax reform. No formal talks between Corzine and legislators were scheduled Saturday.

The shutdown marks the first time the state government has had to close because of a budget dispute.

"What's happening in the Statehouse is shameful," said Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce, a Republican.

The state Constitution requires a balanced budget by July 1, but the deadline has been missed four times in five years. Nothing happened when deadlines were missed before, but the state never went past the morning of July 2 without an adopted budget. Without one, the state has no authority to spend money. The shutdown lasts until a budget agreement is signed.

Using football metaphors, Lagarde said: "The Europeans are on the field," and were "waiting for balls and looking to play."

Emerging countries such as Brazil "are playing squarely on defense" while the United States "is totally out of the game."

"We are worried about positions on overtures being considered by the (EU) trade commissioner Peter Mandelson," she added.

Mandelson had said Thursday that the European Union's position was not entrenched and that the 25-nation EU and was willing to approach that of the G20 group of emerging countries.

His spokesman Peter Power nonetheless said later Thursday: "It is extremely unlikely to have an agreement this weekend."

Talks were still scheduled to go ahead on Friday in an effort to break the enduring deadlock over the mathematics for cutting trade barriers such as subsidies and customs duties.

The WTO gathering is part of a timetable agreed at a conference in Hong Kong last year, which was meant to steer the Doha Round to a conclusion by December 2006.

The round, which aims to harness trade liberalisation to boost the economies of developing countries, was launched in the Qatari capital in 2001 and was originally meant to end in 2004.

On Thursday, Power told AFP: "The positions are too far apart in the G6," in reference to a grouping of WTO heavyweights, the EU, Australia, Brazil, Japan, India and the United States.

Top officials from the G6 had gathered Thursday evening ahead of wider talks expected to last several days at the Geneva base of the 149-nation WTO.

Africa's abundant natural resources -- ranging from precious metals to iron ore and oil -- should make it a wealthy continent if it were freed from outside exploitation, Chavez said.

"Africa has everything to become a pole of world power in the 21st century. Latin America and the Caribbean are equipped to become another pole," he said.

In a nod to another outspoken opponent of US foreign policy, Chavez hailed Iran's right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also attending the summit in the Gambian capital Banjul.

The Venezuelan leader called for a commission to evaluate joint energy projects between Africa and Latin America, as well as a media venture dubbed Telesur (TeleSouth) and a joint bank Banco del Sur (Bank of the South).

"In Venezuela, we were tired of all our oil going to Count Dracula," said Chavez, referring his government's decision to raise taxes on US oil companies. "Now Venezuela is free and we have recovered control over our oil."

Venezuela is the world's fifth largest oil exporter.

A number of countries -- Brazil, Chile, Cyprus, Congo, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Mauritius, Nicaragua and Norway -- have all signed on to the initiative, and France hopes others will follow suit.

The United States, Canada and Germany, though, oppose the levy, and several airlines have complained that it will simply add to the cost of air travel at a time of high fuel prices.

The money from the tax on flights from France is expected to generate 200 million euros a year for an International Drug Purchase Facility, also known as Unitaid.

The fund will be used to bulk-buy medicines for countries -- mainly in Africa -- that cannot afford them.

Under the measure, passengers flying out of French airports will pay one euro in economy class, and 10 euros in business, if their destination is in the EU. For flights outside Europe, the surcharges are between four and 40 euros, depending on the class.

Passengers who make a stopover in France of less than 12 hours, or who stay longer because of delays, are exempt.

It packs so little value that merry kids chuck pennies into the fountain near the candy store, just to watch them splash and sink. Stray pennies turn up everywhere: in streets, cars, sofas, beaches, even landfills with the rest of the garbage.

A penny bought a loaf of bread in early America, but it's a loafer of a coin in an age of inflation and affluence, slowly sliding into monetary obsolescence.

For the first time, the U.S. Mint has said pennies are costing more than 1 cent to make this year, thanks to higher metal prices. "The penny is going to disappear soon unless something changes in the economics of commodities," says Robert Hoge, an expert on North American coins at The American Numismatic Society.

That very idea of spending 1.2 cents to put 1 cent into play strikes many people as "faintly ridiculous," says Jeff Gore, of Elkton, Md., founder of a little group called Citizens for Retiring the Penny.

And yet, while its profile of Abe Lincoln marks time in the bottom of drawers and ashtrays, the penny somehow carries a reassuring symbolism that Americans hesitate to forsake.

"It's part of their past, so they want to keep it in their future," says Dave Harper, editor of Numismatic News.

Gallup polling has shown that two-thirds of Americans want to keep the penny coin. There's even a pro-penny lobby called Americans for Common Cents.

The Mint's announcement is a milestone, though, because coins have historically cost less to produce than the face value paid by receiving banks. They are moneymakers for the government.

U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe (news, bio, voting record), of Arizona, wants to keep it that way. But when he asked Congress to phase out the penny five years ago he failed; he intends to try again this year. If he fails again, he joked recently, he may open a business melting down pennies to resell the metal.

The idea of a penniless society began to gain currency in 1989 with a bill in Congress to round off purchases to the nearest nickel. It was dropped, but the
General Accounting Office in a 1996 report unceremoniously acknowledged that some people consider the penny a "nuisance coin."

In 2002, Gallup polling found that 58 percent of Americans stash pennies in piggy banks, jars, drawers and the like, instead of spending them like other coins. Some people eventually redeem them at banks or coin-counting machines, but 2 percent admit to just plain throwing pennies out!

"Today it's a joke. It's outlived its usefulness," says Tony Terranova, a New York City coin dealer who paid $437,000 for a 1792 penny prototype in what is believed to be the denomination's highest auction price.

"Most people find them annoying when they get them in change," he adds. "I've seen people get pennies in change and actually throw them on the floor."

Not Edmond Knowles, of Flomaton, Ala.

No, he hoarded pennies for nearly four decades as a hobby. He ended up with more than 1.3 million of them - 4.5 tons - in several drums in his garage. His bank refused to take them all at once, but he finally found a coin-counting company, Coinstar, that wanted the publicity.

In the biggest known penny cash-in ever, they sent an armored truck last year, loaded his pennies, and then watched helplessly as it sank into the mud in his yard. They needed a tow truck to redeem it. "I still got a few ruts in the yard," says Knowles.

His years of collecting brought him about $1 a day - $13,084.59 in all.

A penny saved was a penny earned for Knowles, but he took another lesson from the experience, too: "I don't save pennies anymore. It's too big a problem getting rid of them."

Another problem: deciding what to make the penny from. Copper, bronze and zinc have been used, even steel in 1943 when copper was desperately needed for the World War II effort. In 1982, zinc replaced most of the penny's copper to save money, but rising zinc prices are now bedeviling the penny again.

"I'm very surprised they haven't gone to plastic," muses Bill Johnson, a wheat-penny collector who owns the Plimoth Candy Co. (It uses an old spelling of Plymouth.)

Even in his shop where a penny still buys a Tootsie Roll, he leaves a few pennies scattered on top of the cash register for customers like Lindsay Taylor, of Westwood, who is buying $1.78 worth of candy.

She is carrying no pennies because her sons have taken them for their old-fashioned piggy banks, which automatically flip coins inside. Her 2-year-old, she says, "just loves pushing the button."

Others have their own reasons for valuing the humble coin, which borrowed its colloquial name from British currency. The "cent" - meaning 1 percent of a dollar - has been struck every year except 1815, when the United States ran out of British-made penny blanks in the wake of the War of 1812.

"It's part of the fabric of American culture," says David Early, a spokesman for the government's Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

The penny took on the profile of President Lincoln, beloved as the Union's savior during the Civil War, on the centennial of his birth in 1909. The first ones carried ears of wheat on the tails side, but the Lincoln memorial has replaced those. Four new tails designs with themes from Lincoln's life are planned for 2009, with a fifth permanent one afterward to summarize his legacy.

This redesign, the first major one since 1959, has heartened penny lovers.

Those who want to keep the penny coin include small merchants who prefer cash transactions, contractors who help supply pennies, and consumer advocates who fear rounding up of purchases.

"We think the penny is important as a hedge to inflation," says director Mark Weller of Americans for Common Cents. "Any time you have more accurate pricing, consumers benefit."

Joining with the lobby, the wireless network Virgin Mobile USA recently launched a save-the-penny campaign. Its penny truck will travel cross-country to gather pennies for charity.

Scores of charities esteem the penny, which many Americans donate without a second thought. Like shouts in a playground, pennies can multiply quickly.

"People don't like carrying them around, so we dump them into the nearest bowl," says Teddy Gross, who founded the Penny Harvest charity drive in New York City schools. "By the end of any given year, most Americans have got a stash of capital which is practically useless, but it's within easy reach of a young person."

Last year, his children raked in 55 million pennies, which had to be redeemed with help from the Brink's security company. They also bagged about 200,000 spare nickels.

By the way, the Mint says nickels are also costing more to produce than they're worth. Pity the poor nickel?