Does Money Make Us Happy?
Aaron James
Issue date: 3/10/08 Section: Features
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According to Professor Aaron Ahuvia, not much. At an Executive Skills workshop this Tuesday, Ahuvia revealed that income and wealth account for at most 3-5% of human happiness. That's a surprisingly low number, particularly for someone like me working his tail off in pursuit of 6 figures at graduation. At first I thought, "Yeah money might not deliver for other people, but I'll be making bank!" However, I soon started to take his research seriously and began to wonder what it might imply for my career.
Think of all of the ways that we chase money: schmoozing, recruiting, and competing for high paying job offers. If money doesn't deliver happiness, though, it must deliver something. According to Ahuvia, money provides short term happiness lasting no longer than 18 months. But our short-term thinking leads us to seek money as if this high lasted a lot longer. We confuse money with offers of love and feelings of success, and pursue money to please people around us. All the while, money itself fails to make us any happier. In fact, the more that we care about money, the less happy we are.
Just as I was preparing myself to quit school and join a commune in Oregon, Ahuvia revealed the things that actually lead to happiness: nature and nurture from parents, close friends, a happy marriage with lots of sex, exercise, health, feelings of success, and a faith that includes social support, purpose and hope. One of the highest average happiness scores ever recorded came from a group of people who left high-paying city jobs to take up subsistence farming. I began to wonder if that Oregon commune might offer summer internships.
It's unsettling to consider the possibility that MBA salaries might not deliver any happiness - particularly considering the cost, as debt itself leads to unhappiness. Even more perplexing is what all of this suggests about our economy. Over the last 50 years, personal income in the US has more than doubled in real terms, but overall happiness has remained unchanged.
If economic activity leads to happiness, and goods and services provide a value to customers that can be measured in willingness to pay, then any job that I take after graduation will contribute to society. But if debt and materialism actually decrease happiness, and if income and consumption fail to provide measurable benefits beyond provision for very basic human needs, then our whole economic enterprise is suspect.
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Fasting
posted 3/14/08 @ 3:38 AM EST
There are a lot of very intelligent things in this article. I like how it says that the more one cares about money, the less happy he is. The previously 2 richest people in the world, Gates and Buffet, are using their money to help people. (Continued…)
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