Money and Happiness

A SURVEY of 43 countries published on October 30th by the Pew Research Centre of Washington, DC, shows that people in emerging markets are within a whisker of expressing the same level of satisfaction with their lot as people in rich countries. The Pew poll asks respondents to measure, on a scale from zero to ten, how good their lives are. (Those who say between seven and ten are counted as happy.) In 2007, 57% of respondents in rich countries put themselves in the top four tiers; in emerging markets the share was 33%; in poor countries only 16%—a classic expression of the standard view that richer people are more likely to be happy. But in 2014, 54% of rich-country respondents counted themselves as happy, whereas in emerging markets the percentage jumped to 51%.

The convergence happened thanks to huge improvements in countries such as Indonesia (+35) and Pakistan (+22). In 12 of the 24 emerging markets, half or more people rate their life satisfaction in the top tiers of the ladder. The link between income and satisfaction has not been snapped. Poor countries still lag behind: only a quarter of the people there are in the happy tiers. There is a clear connection between income growth (as opposed to income levels) and happiness. And within countries, richer people express more satisfaction than their poorer neighbours. But the relationship between money and contentment is more complex than it once seemed.

[Source: The Economist]