Study Shows that Increased Wealth Doesn't Make You Happier in the Long Run

Like a lot of people of moderate means, I occasionally will pick up a one-dollar lottery ticket, especially if the jackpot is like $200 million. I don't really know why I wait until it's that high, I'd probably be OK with 30 or 40 million, but a lot of people wait until it's sky high just like me before they buy a ticket.

For a couple of hours after I pluck down my hard earned money for the ticket, I fantasize about what I would do with all that cash. Some of it's the usual stuff: buy a couple of fancy houses, get a big boat, a Porshe, donate some of it to charity and take care of all of my friends. Then I think about something that seems kind of weird.

Since I am a big history buff and have been reading the Tarot practically all of my adult life, I'd think about opening an amusement park based on all of the scenes from the Tarot deck. I'd have actors dressed up like all of the characters and they would explain to the guests what their meaning is as they encounter them. The park would also have a medieval forest and a burning tower, a guy dressed up as death, knights etc. Then there's the incense bed and breakfast...

Building all that stuff would be better than just sitting around and trying to figure out ways to spend the money. But then I start thinking that all that money might just create more problems that it would solve.

I might feel guilty giving some of it to one charity over another. If I didn't give the same amount to all my friends they might find out and get mad, or they might blow it and expect me to give them more.

Or, I might meet someone and fall in love and then just find out that they wanted me just for my money. In other words, being terribly rich might just be the road to misery, not happiness as so many people believe.

Most all of us think that if we won the lottery, it would make us happy. But would it? Well, according to Medical News Today, the latest research indicates that having more wealth probably wouldn't make us any happier.

"A new collaborative paper by economist Richard Easterlin - namesake of the "Easterlin Paradox" and founder of the field of happiness studies - offers the broadest range of evidence to date demonstrating that a higher rate of economic growth does not result in a greater increase of happiness."

The researchers sampled a large group of respondents from 37 different countries around the world from all different kinds of governments and economies and found that in all of them, a sense of well-being within that country did not increase with additional wealth.

This was a long-term study that rebukes some other short-term studies that showed that there was a link between material success and happiness. In this paradox, Easterlin shows that the results of the short-term studies were actually where people were happier after rebounding from economic collapse.

It essentially shows that people are most happy when the have enough money, but more doesn't make them any more happy. Since that's my situation, I tend to agree with that conclusion. But I'm not going to tear up that lottery ticket.

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/211409.php