Will Money Increase Subjective Well-Being?

“Financial satisfaction, a measure of subjective financial well-being, is an important component of general well-being (Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002).”

“As argued by Diener and Biswas-Diener (2002) for financial satisfaction, housing satisfaction can also be seen as a ‘‘mediator’’ of individual happiness or well-being.2 Interest in satisfaction with different aspects of life as mediators to explain individuals’ happiness or quality of life started…”

“Unlike objective measures, which refer to observable conditions such as income or health, definitions of SWB typically exclude objective conditions, although these can influence ratings of SWB (e.g. Diener, 1984; Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002).”

“Across studies, we measured the broad construct of subjective well-being (SWB) using multiple scales (see Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Kashdan, Biswas-Diener, & King, 2008).”

“…that the relationship between national wealth and national well-being is asymptotic; as a country moves up the prosperity ladder, additional increases in national wealth tend to buy less and less national happiness (Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Frey & Stutzer, 2002; Helliwell, 2003; Schyns, 2003).”

“Previous research indicates that subjective well-being is positively associated with income, especially among low and middle income populations (Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002).”

“Cognitive and affective dimensions of SWB are considered as separate (Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Watson & Clark, 1997) but related constructs, with a higher correlation of LS with positive affect than with negative affect (for other conceptualizations of SWB, see Busseri & Sadava, 2011).”

“Although hundreds of studies have examined the actual link between money and happiness (see Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002, for a review), only one study has examined laypeople’s intuitions about this relationship (Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2006).”

“…the effect, we also included control variables that have previously been shown to predict financial behavior and well-being (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998; Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002): age, gender, income, and overall spending (Model 1), as well as participants’ and products’ Big Five personality…”

“-Benjamin Franklin Psychologists have found a surprisingly small relationship between money and happiness (Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Frey & Stutzer, 2002; Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2006), and economists have found Americans’ happiness levels to have remained largely constant despite…”

“Income is positively correlated with SWB (Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Diener et al., 2010), whereas negative work-related events such as getting fired are negatively correlated with SWB (Luhmann et al., 2012).”

“…happiness or subjective well-being depends not only on the absolute level of income but also on comparisons of this level with those of others, especially those who share similar socioeconomic characteristics (Clark and Oswald, 1996; Diener and Biswas-Diener, 2002; Caporale et al., 2009).”

“3 2002; Tesch-Römer et al., 2008), income (Deaton, 2008; Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Easterlin, 1995; Frijters et al., 2004), wealth (Lindqvist et al., 2020; Schyns, 2002), unemployment (Binder & Coad, 2015; Winkelmann, 2009), health (Gwozdz & Sousa- Poza, 2010; Herman et al., 2013), social capital (Bjørnskov, 2003;…”

“For instance, happy workers usually have higher incomes (Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002), help their coworkers at work (George and Brief 1992), and are also more favored by their boss (Cropanzano and Wright 2001).”

“At a societal level, unhappiness and loneliness can accentuate personal acquisitiveness as opposed to philanthropy (Chang & Arkin, 2002; Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002).”

“…effects of debt, it is surprising that given burgeoning psychological research on the relation between finances and overall subjective well-being (SWB) (see reviews by Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002; Howell and Howell 2008) there has been a comparative lack of research on the impact of debt on SWB.”

“Also, they served as auxiliary variables to adjust for possible effects of missing data (enders, 2010; Graham, 2003; as stressed by Graham (2009) “there is no good way of incorporating auxiliary variables into a complete cases model unless they can reasonably be incorporated (e.”

“These studies consistently showed that individuals with high incomes experience a higher level of life satisfaction than those with low incomes (e.g., Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Diener & Oishi, 2000; Stevenson & Wolfers, 2008).”

“Valuing and pursuing something deeper in life than merely the accumulation of evermoremass-produced goods are found to be important for happiness (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999; Diener and Biswas-Diener, 2002).”

“However, this rational neo-economic approach to individual freedom must be seen critically in that happiness may only be derived though consumption and various studies provide evidence that increases in material satisfaction are not automatically followed by subjective wellbeing [22,23].”

“For those for whom the possession of material objects weighs more heavily, standard of living plays a stronger role in life satisfaction (Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002).”

“…how countries rank in terms of life satisfaction or happiness reveal that, in general, more money leads to higher life satisfaction ratings, and that this relationship reaches a point of diminishing returns (Biswas-Diener, 2008; Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Diener & Oishi, 2000; Easterlin, 1974).”

“Previous cross-national studies investigated the role of income on the life satisfaction of adults, both at the individual level and the aggregated country level, and found that adult life satisfaction is dependent on an income level which allows for basic needs to be met (Diener et al. 1995; Diener and Biswas-Diener…”

“, 2012) and helpful for assessing the full conceptualization of subjective well-being (Biswas-Diener et al., 2009; Diener and Biswas-Diener, 2002; Kashdan et al., 2008), which cannot be captured in one single scale (Diener, 1984).”

“, income and productivity, and social relationships such as marriage and friendship (Diener and Biswas-Diener, 2002; Lyubomirsky et al., 2005).”

“Wealth is weakly correlated with happiness (Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002), but isolation and separation, which are characteristic of modern ways of living, are strongly correlated with depression (on the dyadic relatedness hypothesis, see Baumeister and Leary 1995).”

“…most leave unan- swered the question of whether it is income per se that drives life satisfaction, or any of a broad range of its correlates: health, education, individualistic ideology, political freedom and rights, and so on (see Diener and Biswas-Diener, 2002, for a discussion of this issue).”

“However, experiencing control over the environment, perceiving that meaningful goals are being achieved and having positive social relationships are factors that affect subjective well-being (Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002).”

“There is no clear relationship between individual income, income in societies (Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002) and subjective well-being, but findings from a few studies indicate that valuing material things and financial success is negatively correlated with well-being (Kasser and Ryan 1993).”

“After extensively reviewing the literature on money and SWB, Diener and Biswas-Diener (2002), conclude with this advice: “avoid poverty, live in a rich country, and focus on goals other than material wealth” (p. 161).”

“Two main findings have been replicated repeatedly: First, the cross-sectional correlation between income and SWB is typically small to moderate (e.g., Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Diener & Oishi, 2000; Dolan, Peasgood, & White, 2008; Lucas & Schimmack, 2009).”

“In contrast to the increasing levels of consumption, a 1997 World Development Report (among others) studying 65 countries showed that happiness and satisfaction with life are correlated up to about $13,000 in per capital income (1995 dollars)—and after that more money, more goods, more things, do not necessarily produ…”

“This general question is commonly adopted for the studies on life satisfaction (Di Tella and MacCulloch 2001; Easterlin 2005; Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002).”

“The case studies further confirm that money contributes to people’s wellbeing to the extent that it satisfies the material needs, but that subjective wellbeing is subject to prior economic situation and relative to overall living environment of an individual (see Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002).”

“These findings accord with previous studies on the relationship between materialism and happiness (Diener and Biswas-Diener, 2002).”

“While several studies have observed financial security appeared to be a direct relation between income and SWB (e.g., Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002) and other studies have identified a relation between financial security and life satisfaction (e.g., Michalos, 1980), the present investigation extends…”

“An R2 of 0.077 corresponds arithmetically to a Pearson r coefficient of 0.28, which can be compared to the standard finding, in developed nations, of around r ¼ 0.15 (pointed out in the review by Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002).”

“This would be consistent with the finding that the positive relationship between income and well-being tapers off once a person’s basic needs are met (Diener and Biswas-Diener, 2002).”

“extrinsic; Malka and Chatman 2003), and the degree to which individuals prize material goals as compared to other values (low vs. high material goals; Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002).”

“This appears to be perceived as somewhat of an anomaly for OECD analysts, despite empirical research dating to the 1970s that showed that a rise in income had no effect on happiness after a certain point (i.e. the Easterlin Paradox, see also Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002; Diener et al. 2009).”

“Another way to ‘handle’ the problem of SWB in SLCA, as pointed out by Matthias Finkbeiner, who among others reviewed this article, could be to adopt the same strategy as taken in ELCA.”

“This is believed to be so because rises in income help the poor meet their basic material needs (Howell et al. 2006; Camfield et al. 2010; Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002; Easterlin 2003).”

“Although there is only a modest positive association between income and subjective well-being within countries (Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002), personal income is a resource that wives deploy in bargaining over housework (England and Farkas 1986) and money (Lundberg, Pollack and Wales 1997; Treas…”

“For some instances, the sense of well-being has been shown to be strongly related to helping co-workers (George, 1991), offering social support to colleagues (Iverson, Olekalns & Erwin, 1998), and to income (Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002).”

“Results from previous studies suggest that age (Ha and Kim 2013; Blanchflower and Oswald 2008), income (Ha and Kim 2013; Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002; Easterlin 2001), gender (Gonzalez Gutierrez et al. 2005; Haring et al. 1984), education (Ha and Kim 2013; Dolan et al. 2008), marital status (Ha…”

“It is well known that economy and individualism-collectivism show very different patterns of relations at the individual and national levels (e.g., Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002).”