TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Headey, Bruce
AU  - Muffels, Ruud
AU  - Wooden, Mark
        TI  - Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness… Or Does It? A Reconsideration Based on the Combined Effects of Wealth, Income and Consumption
        PY  - 2004/Jul/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 1218
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp1218
        AB  - The accepted view among psychologists and economists alike is that economic well-being
has a statistically significant but only weak effect on happiness/subjective well-being (SWB).
This view is based almost entirely on weak relationships with household income. The paper
uses household economic panel data from five countries – Australia, Britain, Germany,
Hungary and the Netherlands – to provide a reconsideration of the impact of economic wellbeing
on happiness. The main conclusion is that happiness is considerably more affected by
economic circumstances than previously believed. In all five countries wealth affects life
satisfaction more than income. In the countries for which consumption data are available
(Britain and Hungary), non-durable consumption expenditures also prove at least as
important to happiness as income. Further, results from panel regression fixed effects models
indicate that changes in wealth, income and consumption all produce significant, though not
large, changes in satisfaction levels.
        KW  - subjective wellbeing
KW  - life satisfaction
KW  - economic well-being
KW  - income
KW  - consumption
KW  - wealth
        ER  -