"The
belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but
mostly illusory," the researchers wrote. "People with above-average
income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier
than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and
do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities."
Intresting enough
having more income can stress people out as they do task in their free
time that don’t make them happy. The researchers created a tool to
measure people’s day-to-day happiness called Day Reconstruction Method (DRM.)
This tool measure the “enjoyment scale” that the people that
participated describing the previous day’s activities.
The researchers
had 909 employed women in Texas complete surveys in 2004 in reference to
how having a higher income made their lives happier. Each day they
would record in a short diary form their feelings about how the day
went.
The women that
participated were asked to report what percentage of time they spent in
a bad mood the previous day. They were also asked to guess how income
level would affect the bad mood, would more income make a reduced bad
mood or make it worse.
Women that earned
less than $20,000 per year guessed that they would on average spend 32
percent more of their time in a bad mood compared to a women that earned
$100,000 per year. The reality is that the women that earned $20,000 or
less a year actually reported have only 12 percent more of their time on
a bad mood compared to women who earned over $100,000. The income
ideals of the low income women were over exaggerated. Earning more
money wasn’t as great of a reward in moods as they predicted.
The researchers
wanted more evidence so they conducted the DRM survey with 810 women in
Ohio in May of 2005. This time the researchers wanted the participants
to report their moment to moment experiences. They were also asked to
report their household income and also their overall satisfaction of
their lives as a whole. The results of the Ohio study reflected that
the moment to moment happiness was less related to income than a
person’s overall satisfaction with life.
"If
people have high income, they think they should be satisfied and reflect
that in their answers," Krueger said. "Income, however, matters very
little for moment-to-moment experience."
To
further investigate happiness with income the researchers looked at the
Bureau of Labor Statistics survey to see how varying income levels spent
their time. The higher the income the more the people reported working,
shopping, childcare, and other “obligatory” activities. When people mad
more income they spent less time on “passive leisure” activities, which
include socializing and watching TV.
The
government reports that men that made over $100,000 per year spent only
19.9 percent of their time on passive leisure compared to 34.7 percent
spent on passive activities in men that made less than $20,000. The
results were similar for women. If women made over $100,000 they spent
19.6 percent time on passive leisure activities compared to 33.5 percent
in women that made less than $20,000.
"Despite the weak relationship between income and global life
satisfaction or experienced happiness, many people are highly motivated
to increase their income," the study said. "In some cases, this focusing
illusion may lead to a misallocation of time, from accepting lengthy
commutes (which are among the worst moments of the day) to sacrificing
time spent socializing (which are among the best moments of the day).
The
researchers are continuing studies of their DRM surveys with men to
further compare data on income and happiness. They felt that focusing
on women help to isolate a women’s viewpoint on income.
Nicole Wilson
Best Syndication
Books on Happiness
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