Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Happiness formula

Do you have no friends but still aspire for happiness? Then you'd better have £50,000 on your account. According to the economist, Professor Oswald at Warwick University, this amount of money is what it takes to make up for not having friends and still be happy. Although, luckily enough for all of us with small purses, according to research on happiness, deep and meaningful relationships with friends and family has a much bigger effect on average on happiness than a typical person's income. BBC News writes more on why the sense of happiness doesn't increase along with the standard of living, and on what does boost happiness, here.
[via 3quarksdaily]

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Helge Keitel of the blog, VISUAL
RADIO i
ntroduced me to your blog. You have an excellent blog too and
hopefully I will try to review it in near future. About happiness, I believe
that Bhutanese government is the only government in the world that gives most
emphasis on the happiness of its population. I cover about
Bhutan in my blog and you will
be amazed to know that the country got its first blog only 4 months ago.

S M Mehdi Hassan said...

It is an interesting post. Few months ago it was found in statistics that Bangladeshi is the happiest nation in the world. Well you see I live in Bangladesh. I do not know what to say. Because I see so much poverty and suffering around me. I really do not know how these scientists measure happiness.

Paeonia said...

Also, the word "happiness" signifies various things to different people. And moreover, perhaps many think of the current mood they're in when asked to rate their happiness. A professor of social conditions for human happiness, Ruut Veenhoven, has recorded 15 separate academic definitions according to this site: http://www.biopsychiatry.com/happiness/happycountry.html

It is definitely an interesting area and I'll keep looking into it!

Helge Keitel said...

Hello, this is Helge Keitel from Visual Radio and Digital Villages. I found this page while testing http://wink.com/ and searching myself. My regards to Razib Ahmed as well. Have a great blogging day. - Helge Keitel