Income & Happiness

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Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one.

Ben Franklin

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Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Samuel Johnson, 1776, 18th century English scholar and writer and the single most quoted prose writer in the English language in most dictionaries of quotations.

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• Researchers have found that greater income and wealth lead to greater happiness.
  
  
• However, it is relative to your expectations.
  
  
• Aspirations grow along with income, and undercut the favorable effect of income growth on happiness.
  
  
• People think they will be happier in the future because they think their aspirations will be the same while income grows.
  
  
• Aspirations grow along with income.
  
  

Source: Income and Happiness: Towards a Unified Theory, Richard A Rasterlin, The Economic Journal, 111 (July), 465 –484. Royal Economic Society 2001