Authors
Nikhil K Sengupta, Danny Osborne, Carla A Houkamau, William James Hoverd, Marc Stewart Wilson, L Halliday, Tim West-Newman, Fiona Kate Barlow, Gavin Armstrong, Andrew Robertson, Chris G Sibley
Publication date
2012/2/4
Journal
New Zealand Journal of Psychology
Volume
41
Issue
2
Pages
21-34
Publisher
New Zealand Psychological Society
Description
The rising costs of living and unemployment in the wake of the global financial crisis have brought monetary considerations to the forefront of people’s minds. In this climate of economic uncertainty, the age-old question of whether earning more money makes one happier seems especially pertinent. Decades of research by economists and psychologists suggest that the answer to this question is far from straightforward (see Diener & Seligman, 2004; Fischer & Boer, 2010 for discussion). For example, Kahneman and Deaton (2010) recently found that although earning more was linked to higher life-satisfaction (general positive evaluations of one’s life overall), the link between income and day-to-day emotional well-being was far weaker. They also found that once a certain level of income was reached (approximately US $75,000), no further gains in emotional happiness were accrued. This suggests that the effect of income on happiness depends on what form of well-being is being investigated and on the income level at which the effect is being studied. It seems that money does ‘buy’happiness, but only a certain kind of happiness, and only up to a point.
Total citations
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Scholar articles
NK Sengupta, D Osborne, CA Houkamau, WJ Hoverd… - New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 2012