Try also to buy experiences that can be part of a bigger journey for you. Something that takes you closer to a lifelong passion. For instance, why not become the world’s leading expert in blue?
You would have to look into history (why do we call royal blood blue blood?), science (why is the sky blue?), anthropology (what are the different cultural connotations of blue?), language (why are blue, blau (German) and bleu (French) similar, but so different to azul (Spanish), niebieski (Polish) and sininen (Finnish)?), anatomy (how many shades of blue can the human eye identify?), genetics (why do so few people have blue eyes?) and photography (what is so magical about the blue hour?).
If you were to become the expert in blue, imagine saving up for and planning to visit Chefchaouen, the completely blue city in the Rif mountains of northern Morocco, the Blue Nile in Ethiopia, or the Blue Mountains in Australia, where an organic chemical found in the abundant eucalyptus trees in the mountains provides elements for the blue haze after which the mountains were named. Those experiences would be even more rewarding if they were part of your passion for blue.
It would also provide you with an identity beyond your job. So what do you do? I am interested in the colour blue.
HOW MUCH MONEY DOES HAPPINESS BUY?
Finally, when it comes to money and happiness, while money may reduce misery and thus cause higher levels of life satisfaction, the reverse relationship – that happiness may lead to a higher income – may also be true.
At least, that is what Dr Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and Professor Andrew Oswald have found. Jan-Emmanuel is associate professor of economics and strategy at Said Business School and the University of Oxford – but, more importantly, a nice guy. I met him the first time in the United Arab Emirates at a conference on happiness.
‘We have been looking at the graphs the wrong way,’ says Jan. ‘We present the data like happiness is the function of income – but what if we got it wrong? What if the relationship goes the other way?’
‘You would need to follow thousands of people over decades to prove that.’
‘We proved it. We used the Add Health Data.’ Add Health Data is a large US sample of representative individuals who have been studied over time, and includes data on positive affect, life satisfaction and income.
‘Their happiness level when they are young predicts their income later in life.’
‘But could it be that parents with longer education and higher income have happier kids, and those parents also make sure that kids go to university and therefore end up with higher income later in life?’ I ask, and feel quite proud, as I am by far the dumbest guy at the table.
‘Here is the kicker,’ Jan says, smiling and leaning in over the table, as if he is about to reveal the nuclear launch codes. ‘We have thousands of siblings in the study – so we can remove the effect of the parents. The happier brother is going to make more money later in life.’
And the effect is big. The study shows that a one-point increase in happiness on a five-point scale at the age of twenty-two means an income higher by $2,000 seven years later. Positive people seem more likely to get a degree, find a job and be promoted. In addition, the study’s results are robust and include controls such as education, IQ, physical health, height, self-esteem and later happiness.
The implication of this study underlines the importance of the subjective well-being of our kids – and I also understand why Jan lowered his voice when he revealed their findings. The knowledge would be dangerous in the hands of kids. ‘No need to do homework, Dad. Just give me some sweets – otherwise my future earnings may be in jeopardy.’ Let’s keep the study ‘Estimating the Influence of Life Satisfaction and Positive Affect on Later Income Using Sibling Fixed-Effects’ to ourselves, shall we?
MONEY
Investing in the common good
The Nordic countries: Wide public support for a high level of taxation means a good return on quality of life. Read more on this page.
The ‘spend less, live more’ experiment
UK: As an experiment, Michelle McGagh spent one year buying the bare minimum and found ways to enjoy life without financial wealth. Read more on this page.
The Giving Pledge
US: The Giving Pledge is a philanthropic initiative started by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates which encourages the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to donate the majority of their wealth to help address society’s biggest issues, from the alleviation of poverty to health care to education. Today, more than 150 billionaires from more than fifteen countries have signed the pledge.
Targeting the Ultra-poor Programme
Pabna, Bangladesh: The development organization BRAC helps people out of poverty by bringing them together and having them pool their resources to start their own businesses and to resolve problems in the community.
The Robin Hood Restaurant
Madrid, Spain: Established by the charity Mensajeros de la Paz, this is a typical restaurant by day but, at night, it transforms into a pioneering place where homeless people can dine at tables set with flowers and with proper cutlery and glasses, free of charge. The restaurant uses the money from the paying customers at breakfast and lunch to fund these free evening meals.
Reaching Out Vietnam
Hoi An, Vietnam: Reaching Out Vietnam provides opportunities for people of disability to learn skills and gain meaningful employment so that they are able to integrate fully into their communities and lead independent and fulfilling lives. Fairtrade giftshops sell items made by disabled people in Vietnam and the profits are fed back into the business to assist disabled people by giving them training and finding them jobs.
HEALTH
Across cultures, there seems to be one thing that all parents wish for their children: good health. Good health enables us to play, to seek out adventures, to pursue happiness.
At the Happiness Research Institute, we, together with Leo Innovation Lab, have explored how psoriasis – a chronic and recurrent inflammatory disease of the skin – affects happiness. Up to the time of writing, the PsoHappy project has collected data from almost fifty thousand people from more than forty countries across the world. In every country, we find that those living with psoriasis are less happy than the general population.
As a happiness researcher, I cannot see a more obvious policy to improve quality of life than by providing universal health care. In the Nordic countries, all of which consistently rank among the ten happiest countries in the world, free health care is available to everyone. People simply have less to worry about in daily life than most other people on this front, and that forms a sound basis for high levels of happiness.
Or, as US senator Bernie Sanders puts it,
‘In Denmark, there is a very different understanding of what “freedom” means. In that country, they have gone a long way to ending the enormous anxieties that come with economic insecurity. Instead of promoting a system which allows a few to have enormous wealth, they have developed a system which guarantees a strong minimal standard of living to all – including the children, the elderly and the disabled.’ In other words, Breaking Bad, the TV drama where a teacher turns drug lord to pay his medical bills for cancer treatment, would have made a pretty shitty TV show in a Nordic context. ‘Here is your treatment plan, Walter. I will see you on the fifth.’
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