Money DOES Buy Happiness. (It's Proven!)

While I was surfing the net today, procrastinating before starting to prepare for the final tomorrow (eek!) I came across an interesting looking article on my homepage. The article, which was linked "rich worry their kids are spoiled" actually made me laugh silently to myself when I first looked at it. Rich kids? Spoiled?? How could this be! I thought sarcastically, while clicking on the link to read the seemingly ridiculous piece.

The survey first states that 35% of wealthy American parents believe that their children may be "too spoiled and have too many material possessions." While I'm living in Evanson for the time being, I did go to Sears School in Kenilworth (as do my younger brother and sister right now) and I know how spoiled rich kids can be. I was always lumped into that "rich Kenilworth kid" group when I got to New Trier, and it's probably one of the most annoying stereotypes out there.

As I skimmed through the article, I came across another tidbit that I found particularly interesting. Of those surveyed, 2/3 have "developed a greater appreciation for the non-material wealth in my life" and half said they "feel more centered because the recession has given me an opportunity to re-evaluate my priorities." People are actually becoming happier during the recession? Talk about a shocker!

I then thought to myself, I wonder if people with less wealth really are happier than extremely wealthy Americans? So I googled it, in hopes of writing an amazingly happy-go-lucky blogpost about how money really DOESN'T buy happiness! (I was pretty excited, as you can tell.) However, the study that I found is not necessarily as optimistic as my initial thoughts were.

In an article called "The Economics of Happiness," I found that families with yearly incomes of $150,000 or higher (top 10% in the country) had a reported 53% feeling "very happy." Good for them! Wow. This was, of course, compared to less than half that amount of happiness in the lowest 10% of Americans. I found this piece of information very sad, and I was forced to change the title of my blog post to read that money DOES in fact buy happiness.

It's weird, because I feel like I always hear about the people with the least getting the most out of life- countries like Bhutan measuring their people in GDH (Gross Domestic Happiness) rather than Gross Domestic Productivity. Being happy is being productive anyway, isn't it?

It's not like I'm going to go around believing that I won't be happy until I receive my brand new HDTV, but that survey really did kill my mood a lot. Just a little more finals week joy :)