Wealth and Happiness

This is an extract from Daniel Kahneman's work on the relationship between wealth and happiness

"The belief that high income is associated with happiness is mostly illusory. People with above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities."

Tal Ben Shahar says in Happiness, "Ironically people seem more depressed once they attain material prosperity than they did when striving for it. The rat racer is sustained by hope that his actions will yield some future benefit, which makes the nagative emotions more bearable. Once he reaches his destination and realises that material prosperity did not make him happy, there is nothing to sustain him. Paradoxically, "making it" makes them less happy, because earlier they were sustained by the belief that once they got there they would be happy."

"When we get more wealthy, we resume our expectations upwards and so we aspire for ever more lofty and expensive pleasures - a treadmill that never ends, even for billionnaires. The rich may experience more pleasure than the poor, but they also need more pleasure to be equally satisfied.

Kaneman's research suggests one way to escape from this hedonic treadmill - a life rich in rewarding relationships.