HAPPINESS 'IS ABOUT EARNING MORE THAN YOUR FRIENDS' !!!!!

[Daanyeer]

By Daily Mail Reporter
14th December 2010

Money doesn’t buy happiness – unless you earn more of it than your friends.

A study of life satisfaction in dozens of countries found that contrary to popular perception, economic growth doesn’t bring with it a corresponding long-term rise in happiness.

It found that while people may feel more positive in the short-term, the shine quickly wears off.

However, within an individual country, the rich are happier than the poor.

This implies that what matters is earning more than others, not the actual amount earned, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports.

The theory was first coined in the 1970s by U.S. researcher Richard Easterlin and became known as the Easterlin Paradox.

With several recent studies challenging his conclusions, Professor Easterlin set out to see if the pattern still exists.

After crunching together figures from 37 countries around the globe including burgeoning economies such as China, South Korea and Chile, the University of Southern California professor said little had changed.

He said: ‘Simply stated, the happiness-income paradox is this: at a point in time both among and within countries, happiness and income are positively correlated.

‘But, over time, happiness does not increase when a person’s income increases.’

He added: ‘China’s growth rate implies a doubling of real per capita income in less than 10 years, and Chile’s in 18 years.

‘Yet both China and Chile show mild declines in life satisfaction.’



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