Making the world a better place: the tricky bit.
...Does money buy happiness? Answers to this question differ, depending, in part, on whether one asks an economist or a psychologist. The former would point to correlations between higher incomes and greater self-reported well-being, whereas the latter would argue that happiness shows little correlation with absolute material goods and is instead dictated largely by an individual's so-called set-point. Another strand of research invokes a hedonic treadmill, whereby income matters until subsistence requirements are met, at which point comparisons with one's neighbors are what influence one's sense of life satisfaction.
...Higher national income has not brought the better quality of life that many expected, and surveys in the US show no increase in happiness over the past 60 years. These surveys rely on questions about subjective well-being, and it is reasonable to ask how reliable survey answers are as measures of the quality of life as people experience it. Oswald and Wu measure [average] subjective well-being in each U.S. state, and then compare it with the average objectively measured wage in the same U.S. state (both variables being controlled for personal factors). The negative correlation of the two variables is remarkably high-as it should be if higher wages are compensating for a lower experienced quality of life (and vice versa). http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/327/5965/534
...Differences in well-being across states are not minor. In cardinal terms, they correspond to up to 0.12 life-satisfaction points [on a scale of 1 to 4] across U.S. states, which is similar in size to the individual cross-sectional effect on life satisfaction of marital separation or unemployment, other things being equal. It might be thought unusual that Louisiana-a state affected by Hurricane Katrina-comes so high in the state life-satisfaction league table. It was found that Louisiana showed up strongly before Katrina and in a mental-health ranking done by Mental Health America, based on data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health 2004-05. Nevertheless, it is likely that Katrina altered the composition of this state-namely, that those who left were not a random sample of the population. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/327/5965/576
That is, the worried have finally left the state and Louisiana, the poorest state in the US, has became the place of unparalleled happiness. Here is the problem with making the world a better place in a nutshell. If a higher national income has no effect on happiness whatsoever regardles of the trumpeted "progress" and, furthermore, the happiest state in the Union is the one which has recently been devastated by a hurricane, what one is supposed to think about the title idea and the means that are suggested to reach this objective?
...Higher national income has not brought the better quality of life that many expected, and surveys in the US show no increase in happiness over the past 60 years. These surveys rely on questions about subjective well-being, and it is reasonable to ask how reliable survey answers are as measures of the quality of life as people experience it. Oswald and Wu measure [average] subjective well-being in each U.S. state, and then compare it with the average objectively measured wage in the same U.S. state (both variables being controlled for personal factors). The negative correlation of the two variables is remarkably high-as it should be if higher wages are compensating for a lower experienced quality of life (and vice versa). http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/327/5965/534
...Differences in well-being across states are not minor. In cardinal terms, they correspond to up to 0.12 life-satisfaction points [on a scale of 1 to 4] across U.S. states, which is similar in size to the individual cross-sectional effect on life satisfaction of marital separation or unemployment, other things being equal. It might be thought unusual that Louisiana-a state affected by Hurricane Katrina-comes so high in the state life-satisfaction league table. It was found that Louisiana showed up strongly before Katrina and in a mental-health ranking done by Mental Health America, based on data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health 2004-05. Nevertheless, it is likely that Katrina altered the composition of this state-namely, that those who left were not a random sample of the population. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/327/5965/576
That is, the worried have finally left the state and Louisiana, the poorest state in the US, has became the place of unparalleled happiness. Here is the problem with making the world a better place in a nutshell. If a higher national income has no effect on happiness whatsoever regardles of the trumpeted "progress" and, furthermore, the happiest state in the Union is the one which has recently been devastated by a hurricane, what one is supposed to think about the title idea and the means that are suggested to reach this objective?