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Chilled out: poll contradicts what we thought we knew about income & happiness

http://www.economist.com/node/21548213

by cs702 • 14 years ago

2 1 14 years ago

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jgarmon• 14 years ago

1) Self-reported happiness is an EXTREMELY unreliable indicator, as the social pressure to "seem happy" is very real and very different by culture, class and educational level

2) Happiness and income are relational in that we've seen over and over again people are most happy not by being objectively "rich" but simply objectively richer than their peer group. "Poor" countries with a growing middle class see themselves as having -- or at least with the potential to have -- more than the median material wealth of their peer group. "rich" countries with shrinking middle classes have the opposite expectation.

Bottom line, this is merely a very clumsy study

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