Money won't buy happiness

BY HELEN HARVEY

In Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, Wilkins Micawber had a theory on money and happiness.

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness," he said. "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

In recent times, New Zealanders have been living outside their income quite happily; they just accumulated debt. But the recession that has descended upon us is changing all that.

And though money won't buy happiness, British comedian Spike Milligan reckons it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery. And worrying about paying the mortgage or losing a job could cause a fair amount of misery.

"Anxiety destroys happiness," New Plymouth psychotherapist Lynne Holdem says. "I think when we hang our happiness on what we have and how much power we have or how much status we have in the community, then we are always feeling anxious because we know we are about to lose it."

The loss could come in many ways, including retiring and losing a position in society, having belongings stolen, losing a job. Our culture encourages us to be shallow, she says.

"It encourages us to feel that we'll get happy with fine clothes or holidays or by increasing our status. And loss of status is difficult to deal with."

Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem so said an American author by the name of Bill Vaughan. And he may be right.

Google happiness and there are gazillions of entries: entire websites are devoted to the subject. There's an international happiness index, numerous surveys on who is happier than whom and untold academic studies on the topic.

One such study, on 16,000 people in England, was done by economist David Blachflower of Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, and Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick, in the UK. They reckon that sex "enters so strongly [and] positively in happiness equations" that increasing intercourse from once a month to once a week would generate the same amount of happiness for the average American as getting an additional US$50,000 in income.

But sex is a short-term fix. Apparently, happiness can be divided into two components: sex, along with eating, sleeping and spending time with friends, is "in-the-moment happiness", things that bring immediate happiness, says Victoria University assistant philosophy lecturer Dan Turton, who is doing his PhD on happiness.

"This is sometimes called pleasure or hedonic happiness. Then there is long-term happiness, which is usually called life satisfaction."

And it's people's long-term happiness that may be under threat because of the recession. But it won't be the loss of money that makes people unhappy, Mr Turton says, it will be the loss of jobs.

"When people are unemployed, it really diminishes their sense of self-worth and it does make them depressed. It's one of the very few things that makes people stay unhappy for a long time. Just about everything else people get used to."

Like if someone wins lotto lots of studies have been done on this, he says. They measure the person's happiness before the win and again after.

"Usually within a year, and definitely within two years, everyone is back at the level of happiness they were before. They get used to it."

The same goes for people who suffer debilitating injuries, such as becoming a paraplegic. In a year or two, people get back to a similar level of happiness they had before the injury, Mr Turton says.

"The exception is if their sense of self-worth was really tied up in something physical they were doing and they don't find something else to tie their self-worth to."

Happiness and self-worth are tied together, especially for long-term happiness.

"Things like having a fulfilling job or having a network of positive relationships around you and a number of different kinds of relationships, like family, friends [are key to being happy]. Or maybe you are involved in a club or you volunteer. If you are in several networks in your community, you tend to be a lot happier, but you also have more support for those bad times when they come."

Ms Holdem agrees. People get their self-esteem from feeling that they do more good than damage to the Earth and to each other, she says.

"So, I feel good when I am kind, when I am generous, when I create something beautiful. Those are the things that give us happiness and when someone wants to come close and be intimate with us."

In the past few years, despite an increase in material wealth, the number of people suffering from stress and depression has increased. This is because people aren't connected, Ms Holdem says.

"We need to be close to people we are attached to, we need close relationships in order to feel good and feel connected and I don't think our culture is good at valuing relationships. It values the acquisition of material things."

The connection between relationships and happiness could be why women end up being more recession-proof than men.

Last year, a Nielsen Consumer Research global survey found women are better suited to cope with recession than men because they are more focused on friendships and relationships, whereas men are more likely to equate money with happiness.

Mr Turton agrees to some extent.

A man's self-worth is often tied up in his employment, he says, but if a career-driven woman loses her job, she will be in the same situation as a man.

"Otherwise I'd agree. If women find their self-worth from other things, they will be better off."

The Nielsen survey also found there are three main drivers of happiness globally: personal financial situation, mental health and job/career.

Ms Holdem says the main drivers are physical fitness, doing things for other people, community service of some kind and connecting with others and with nature. None of them requires money.

Mr Turton says it really depends on who you are and what situation you are in. Money really does make a difference for someone on the poverty line. But the law of diminishing returns operates and as the person gets further from the poverty line, the things money can buy become less important.

In the recession, it will be the people who lose their jobs, especially the very poor and uneducated, who find it hard to get another job, whose happiness levels will take a hammering.

They'll get closer to the poverty line and that will make them a little unhappy. But, mainly, it will be the insecurity and unemployment making them unhappy. And those things set off relationship issues, which may hurt, he says.

But it is not all doom and gloom. Ms Holdem says it is possible the recession might make people happier.

"We've become very used to consuming as a way of trying to meet our needs. But changing drapes or curtains or changing your husband doesn't actually make you happy. What makes you happy is your capacity to love and your capacity to work."

And even if people have lost their job, there is still lots of work to be done: there're elderly people to be looked after, there're young people to be encouraged, there is the environment to be fixed.

Crisis brings opportunity, she says. The recession may actually encourage people to think about how they can give to others, how they can help their neighbours.

The person who has lost his job needs support. He needs to be reminded that he is important for the person he is, not because of the job he did. And he should find work to do and not necessarily paid work. It might be community work for a while, work that is helping somebody else.

She's not underestimating the stress a loss of job or loss of discretionary income can cause, but if people can react to a crisis with compassion for each other, with creativity, then they'll be happy, Ms Holdem says.

"They might not be as rich, but they'll be happy because they have great self-esteem."

 

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