Does Consuming More Increase Well-Being? Is Getting Rich the Path to Happiness?

Edward Morey ()

Chapter Chapter 6 in Deconstructing Behavior, Choice, and Well-being, 2023, pp 175-214 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract What increases and decreases WB, and for how long? Consuming more? Not so much—for long. I dive into the relationship between income and WB, including the Easterlin Paradox. While your income and consumption play a role, their roles are not huge once basic needs are met. So, to identify the influence of a change in income on emotional WB or life-satisfaction WB, one must separate out the effects of age, health, social institutions, gender, equality, genetics, personality, and relationships. And how long do WB shifts last? Our WB depends on our relative position, relative to others and to our former selves. [In my department, a raise that was dollar small but bigger than what others got seemed preferred to more dollars but fewer than what others got. And no one desires to make less than their brother-in-law.] Comparing to our former selves could explain why a loss of income decreases our WB more than a previous raise increased it. We compare on many dimensions besides income. Think about the loss of White privilege. I end with other theories of WB: you have a set point from which it is difficult to deviate from for long, WB is created not by consuming but by the right kind of doing, WB is driven by our relationships, and increasing WB is most easily achieved by reducing unnecessary ill-being (suffering).

Keywords: Income; Happiness; Relative-status effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-36712-0_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031367120

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-36712-0_6

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().