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For Happiness, Seek Family, Not Fortune

June 20, 2008
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(WebMD) Money might buy happiness for some, but for most people having
strong family ties is a much bigger predictor of contentment than
income, a new study shows.

When researchers analyzed data tracking married people over a decade,
they found that while income did contribute to happiness up to a
point, the quality of family relationships was much more important.

The study is one of the first to examine the impact of economic and
family changes over time.

"Much of the research on money and happiness has shown a strong
association up to the point where basic needs are met, and that is
what we found," researcher Rebecca J. North tells WebMD. "But after
this point income has a diminishing impact on happiness."

Money, Family, and Happiness

North and colleagues from the University of Texas at Austin analyzed
data from a study involving 274 married adults living in the San
Francisco Bay area who were followed from 1981 to 1991.

Each of the participants completed surveys at four different time
periods over the decade-long study designed to measure changes in
family income, family support, and happiness.

The surveys indicated that while happiness was strongly tied to
changes in the quality of family relationships over time, it was much
less strongly tied to changes in income.

"If you ask people about this, I think most would say that family
relationships are more important than family income for happiness,"
North says. "But if you look at the way people allocate their time,
you might get a different idea."

The findings may also have implications for how we measure our well-
being at a national level, North and colleagues write in the June
issue of the Journal of Family Psychology.

"Implicit in conventional policy making is an assumption that a strong
economy can be equated with a society's well-being," they note. "Our
findings underscore the importance of additional policy indicators
that can tap the well-being of individuals and families at the
psychosocial level to provide a more comprehensive understanding of a
nation's well-being."

Different Perspective on Happiness and Money

The study adds to a growing body of happiness research, but it is far
from the last word on the topic.

In a paper presented in April at the Brookings Institution in
Washington, D.C., economists Betsey Stevenson, PhD, and Justin
Wolfers, PhD, concluded that income does seem to be directly related
to happiness, within societies and in personal terms.

Using polling data from both rich and poor countries, the researchers
found personal satisfaction to be highest among people living in the
richest countries. Within the countries, people with higher incomes
tended to be happier than those with less money.

In the U.S., for example, 90% of people in households making at least
$250,000 considered themselves "very happy," compared to just 42% of
people in households with incomes below $30,000.

"We looked at 35 years' worth of data and found the relationship
between income and happiness to be very strong," Stevenson tells
WebMD.

The findings seem to contradict the idea that money is only related to
happiness up to the point where basic needs are met.

The research by Stevenson and Wolfers shows that people living in
households with annual incomes of $250,000 tended to report higher
levels of personal satisfaction than people living in households with
annual earnings of $120,000.

"We didn't look at the super-rich, so we can't really say if Bill
Gates is that much happier than the rest of us," Stevenson says.

About 1% of American families have annual incomes of $250,000 or more,
while just 5% earn $120,000 or more.

By Salynn Boyles
Reviewed by Louise Chang
©2005-2008 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/19/health/webmd/main4196906.shtml