Will having more wealth actually make you happier? According to a number of studies an addition to your income isn't only unlikely to make you happier, but it can make those around you less happy, and you for the fear of losing it.
To explain, we must first look at a study from the
National Bureau of Economic Research. Two economists, David Blanchflower of Dartmouth and Andrew Oswald of Warwick, set out to document the relation that age has to overall happiness. What they found was that as income tends to increase steadily over time, happiness follows a U-shape pattern, dipping to its lowest point at around age 45, then quickly climbing up thereafter.
A large-scale survey from the General Social Survey, which included around 20,000 men and 25,000 women of 16 years and older supports these findings. After asking Americans to rank their happiness on a 3 point scale ranging from "very happy" to "pretty happy" to "not too happy", they found a resulting average of 2.2, or just over "pretty happy". The Eurobaromoter,
after conducting a similar survey on close to 400,000 men and women in 11 European countries from 1975 to 1998 found that the average self-assessed happiness score across Europe is 3 out of 4.
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