Does money buy happiness? Many people in high-income countries would certainly say so. Global surveys also frequently support the notion that wealth brings greater life satisfaction. However, these studies often paint a biased picture as they neglect to include people from low-income communities in different parts of the world.
A new study led by Eric Galbraith at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona aimed to remedy that issue. The research team surveyed nearly 3,000 people living in small, diverse societies, many of whom identify as Indigenous and have very low income. The study included people in 19 different countries across five continents.
Unexpectedly, despite having little money, participants largely reported high levels of satisfaction with their lives. In some cases, the levels of life satisfaction among low-income communities rivaled the levels seen in wealthy communities. The average reported life satisfaction among those surveyed was 6.8 out of 10. Most respondents are from areas where people make less than $1,000 per year.
Studies that question people in low-income societies about life satisfaction can be confounded by obvious hardships faced by those communities, past or present. These hardships include poor health and sanitation, oppression, or marginalization that disallow basic human needs to be met. Some of the sites studied with life satisfaction scores averaging 5.1 may have been impacted by these unfortunate circumstances.
Other low-income sites averaged higher than 8.0, which is on par with Scandinavian countries that are consistently ranked as the happiest in the world. Overall, Galbraith’s study suggests that people with very low incomes achieve a level of life satisfaction that is just as high, and in some cases higher, than that found in wealthy nations.
The authors also note that their findings are good news for planetary sustainability. High levels of subjective well-being can be achieved with minimal investment and without depletion of natural resources.
If not money, where does happiness lie?
The results Galbraith and colleagues found track with other studies performed in wealthy countries, showing that career achievement, money, and success are not a sure-fire formula for happiness. Material-based rewards bring temporary pleasure, not sustained happiness or life satisfaction. As many philosophers have noted, contentment is more a matter of internal perspective than external awards.
William B. Irvine, for example, extols the idea of mastering desire and practicing gratitude for the things we are privileged to have. As Epictetus has written, “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” You don’t need to be rolling in the dough to cook up a delectable life.
Notably, despite the material wealth of many industrialized nations, recent years have seen an alarming increase in the amount of depression and suicide. The surprising degree of misery seen in wealthy nations is at odds with the idea that money equates with life satisfaction and hints that people living in a material world have lost sight of something important about what it means to be human.
These concepts may help explain the “why” behind Galbraith’s major finding: Achieving greater life satisfaction does not require the increased materialism that a higher income allows. Contrary to what Barrett Strong sang, the best things in life are, in fact, free. The researchers speculate that “family and social support and relationships, spirituality, and connections to nature are among the important factors on which this happiness is based.”
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It should be noted that this study is not a justification to let people wallow in poverty; on the contrary, our global society should work to ensure that everyone’s basic human needs are met. A smarter takeaway from these findings is that wealthy people or communities are not going to get happier by chasing additional wealth. Sharing good fortune with those in need is a better way to maximize human happiness. As a bonus, being charitable is associated with increased happiness for the donor.
