Income and Output: Their Relation to Happiness

Introduction

All people have experienced various emotions such as anger, saddness, and happiness. In general it is the consenus that the majority of people would like to exprience greater happiness throughout their lives. This raises the question of how can this be done. Recently, Economists have been researching links of GNP (wealth of certain nations) and income to how it effects a citizens happiness. The main questions we will be trying to answer today are: Does greater wealth mean greater happiness? & Why at any point in time people with higher incomes are happier than low income citizens, but over a life cycle as income rises happiness stays relatively constant? These questions will be answered following the work of various economists whose ideas lie on both sides of the argument.

Description

What is happiness?

"By happiness I mean feeling good – enjoying life and feeling it is wonderful. And by unhappiness I mean feeling bad and wishing things were different. There are countless sources of happiness, and countless sources of pain and misery. But all our experience has in it a dimension which corresponds to how good or bad we feel. In fact most people find it easy to say how good they are feeling. A standard question is “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days: would you say you are very happy, pretty happy or not too happy?” Such a question gets 99% response rates – much higher than the average response rates in questionnaires."

                                        -Richard Layard

Income and Happiness

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment

Samuel Jackson, 1776

Income and Happiness: A Unique Paradox

Description

"Researchers say I'm not happier for

being richer but do you know how

much researchers make?

Correlations between Income and Happiness

A Positive Relationship

No Connection Between Income and Happiness

What Can be Done to Raise Happiness

Other Reasons for Happiness