"Consider this: in surveys such as this one, the impoverished people of Calcutta, India, living in crude shacks and with little access to clean water, register about even with Americans on the happiness scale -- and well ahead of the Chinese, South Koreans, and Japanese.
Meanwhile, relatively poor Puerto Ricans and Columbians, appear to be among the happiest people on the globe. + + + There is an avalanche of new research in the areas of success and happiness. Perhaps the leading light in this field is Dr. Martin Seligman, a University of Pennsylvania research psychologist, who has boiled down true happiness to three components: pleasure (things that feel good), involvement (being immersed in things like family, work, and hobbies), and meaning (using personal strengths to serve a larger end). Of the three, Seligman says, pleasure (the one most closely linked to material gain) is the least consequential, a finding that has been reaffirmed in numerous follow-up studies worldwide. For example, studies by Dr. Ruut Veenhoven, a sociologist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, show that the extremely poor -- those earning less than $10,000 a year -- may be rendered unhappy by the relentless stress of poverty. Yet his work shows that after a poor person's income exceeds that level there is no further correlation between money and happiness. After a certain level of income, typically enough to meet basic expenses, money ceases to be a factor. Money and happiness, it seems, really do not go hand in hand -- at least not in the manner you would expect. The World Database of Happiness presents one of the most interesting examinations into whether or not money buys happiness. This database is an ongoing register of scientific research on the subjective enjoyment of life. The scores are based on responses to a question about satisfaction with life and perceptions of personal well-being, the answers to which were rated on a numerical scale ranging from dissatisfied to satisfied. Rating scales ranged from 0 to 10. As you can see from the following list, when you place each country's GDP per capita (in current U.S. dollars), there is not very much correlation between how much money people make and how happy they feel. For example, Guatemalans have the same happiness score as Canadians, although their income is only one-eighth as much. What does tend to reliably correlate with happiness is the quality of relationships with family and friends and a personal sense of belonging to one's community. Ranking Country Score National GDP Per Capita 1 Denmark 8.2 $37,400 2 Colombia 8.1 $6,700 3 Switzerland 8.1 $41,100 4 Austria 8.0 $38,400 5 Iceland 7.8 $38,800 6 Australia 7.7 $36,300 7 Finland 7.7 $35,300 8 Sweden 7.7 $36,500 9 Canada 7.6 $38,400 10 Guatemala 7.6 $4,700 11 Ireland 7.6 $43,100 12 Luxembourg 7.6 $80,500 13 Mexico 7.6 $12,800 14 Norway 7.6 $53,000 15 Netherlands 7.5 $38,500 16 Malta 7.5 $22,900 17 United States 7.4 $45,800 18 Belgium 7.3 $35,300 19 El Salvador 7.2 $5,800 20 New Zealand 7.2 $26,400 21 Germany 7.2 $34,200 22 United Kingdom 7.1 $35,100 23 Honduras 7.1 $4,100 24 Kuwait 7.0 $39,300 25 Saudi Arabia 7.0 $23,200 26 Cyprus 6.9 $27,400 27 Italy 6.9 $30,400 28 Spain 6.9 $30,100 29 Argentina 6.8 $13,300 30 Brazil 6.8 $9,700 31 Dom. Republic 6.8 $7,000 32 Singapore 6.8 $49,700 33 Venezuela 6.8 $12,200 34 Chile 6.7 $13,900 35 Israel 6.7 $25,800 36 Slovenia 6.7 $27,200 37 Uruguay 6.7 $11,600 38 Indonesia 6.6 $3,700 39 France 6.5 $33,200 40 Czech Republic 6.4 $24,200 41 Greece 6.4 $29,200 42 Nigeria 6.4 $2,000 43 Philippines 6.4 $3,400 44 China 6.3 $5,300 45 India 6.2 $2,700 46 Japan 6.2 $33,600 47 Taiwan 6.2 $30,100 48 Uzbekistan 6.2 $2,300 49 Kyrgyzstan 6.1 $2,000 50 Vietnam 6.1 $2,600 51 Iran 6.0 $10,600 52 Peru 6.0 $7,800 53 Portugal 6.0 $21,700 54 Croatia 5.9 $15,500 55 Poland 5.9 $16,300 56 Bolivia 5.8 $4,000 57 Korea, South 5.8 $24,800 58 Bangladesh 5.7 $1,300 59 Senegal 5.7 $1,700 60 Hungary 5.6 $19,000 61 Morocco 5.6 $4,100 62 Montenegro 5.5 $3,800 63 Slovakia 5.5 $20,300 64 South Africa 5.5 $9,800 65 Lebanon 5.3 $11,300 66 Algeria 5.2 $6,500 67 Jordan 5.2 $4,900 68 Kenya 5.2 $1,700 69 Turkey 5.2 $12,900 70 Bos/Herzegovina 5.1 $7,000 71 Estonia 5.1 $21,100 72 Serbia 5.1 $10,400 73 Uganda 5.1 $900 74 Romania 5.0 $11,400 75 Azerbaijan 4.9 $7,700 76 Macedonia 4.9 $8,500 77 Mali 4.9 $1,000 78 Egypt 4.8 $5,500 79 Ghana 4.8 $1,400 80 Iraq 4.7 $3,600 81 Latvia 4.7 $17,400 82 Lithuania 4.6 $17,700 83 Albania 4.4 $6,300 84 Angola 4.4 $5,600 85 Russia 4.4 $14,700 86 Pakistan 4.3 $2,600 87 Bulgaria 4.2 $11,300 88 Georgia 4.1 $4,700 89 Belarus 4.0 $10,900 90 Armenia 3.7 $4,900 91 Ukraine 3.6 $6,900 92 Moldova 3.5 $2,900 93 Zimbabwe 3.3 $200 94 Tanzania 3.2 $1,300 Consider this: in surveys such as this one, the impoverished people of Calcutta, India, living in crude shacks and with little access to clean water, register about even with Americans on the happiness scale -- and well ahead of the Chinese, South Koreans, and Japanese. Meanwhile, relatively poor Puerto Ricans and Columbians, appear to be among the happiest people on the globe. But underlying these thought-provoking results is the simple fact that more is not necessarily better when it comes to enjoying life and feeling satisfied. More may be more, but it is never enough. We're caught up in the myth that by achieving and going up the ladder and having more stuff we'll feel full inside. Yet it isn't so. Some years ago I was helping Jimmy Carter gather his thoughts for his book Virtues of Aging, and at one point I said to him, "President Carter, I have a crazy question for you. I'm about the age now that you were when you were president. Have you come to any new perspectives about what matters in life, now that you're older?" His answer was to the point: "Earlier in my life I thought the things that mattered were the things that you could see, like your car, your house, your wealth, your property, your office. But as I've grown older I've become convinced that the things that matter most are the things that you can't see -- the love you share with others, your inner purpose, your comfort with who you are." So here's the thing. At the end of the day, it may be wisest to judge each of our own life successes not from the outside looking in but from the inside out. It's not about the material things I can show the world, but about how I feel about the work I do; it's about the relationships I have and the love I share. It may well be, as novelist Edith Wharton said, that "if only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time." by Ken Dychtwald Ph.D. - Renowned Psychologist, Gerontologist and Author Go to Huffington Post article link if ranking list posts improperly: http://snipurl.com/jax09
