Money Does
Not Buy Happiness?
By Dr Syed Amir
Bethesda, MD
Caliph Abdur Rehman III (912-961 AD) was the
most powerful and magnificent ruler of Muslim
Spain, his realm stretching from the slopes of
Pyrenees in the north to the barren rocks of Gibraltar
in the south.
During his fifty-year rule, envoys and delegations
from monarchs around the world came to Cordoba,
loaded with gifts and tribute, in quest of an
audience with the Caliph and often had to wait
for months before being received by him. His royal
court at Madinat uz-Zehra presented an aura of
unprecedented opulence and splendor that dazzled
and intimidated his visitors. When Abdur Rehman
died at the age of seventy-five, his suzerainty
over his realm was unchallenged, Andalusia was
secure and the royal treasury brimmed with gold.
All this vast power and wealth aside, happiness
had remained an elusive commodity for the great
sovereign.
According to the seventeenth-century Muslim scholar
and historian, al Maqqari, the Caliph at his deathbed
revealed that during his fifty long years of rule,
he had kept a careful count of the days when he
felt truly happy, and these were only 14.
The experience of the Caliph is not unique. Wealth
is not the source of unmitigated pleasure. For
some rich people, giving away money brings a greater
joy than making or accumulating it. Most recently,
the American billionaire, Warren Buffett, announced
that he would donate 85 percent of his holdings
in stock market, amounting to about $31 billion
at this time, to charity. The bulk of his donation
will be given to The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
established by the world’s richest man and
his wife. The Buffett contribution, representing
the single largest charitable gift ever made,
will double the current assets of the Foundation
which has invested millions of dollars in combating
diseases, especially among children in Africa
and Asia. The rich people who give their wealth
to charity, in preference to bequeathing it all
to their children, live by unusually high moral
principles. Warren Buffett is quoted as saying
that “a very rich person should leave his
kids enough to do anything, but not enough to
do nothing.” He has followed his own advice
par excellence.
The idea that money and wealth do not ensure happiness
seems counterintuitive in the face of common assumption
that rich people must be happy. However, the nexus
of wealth and happiness has never been tested
in a systematic scientific study. Recently, some
researchers at Princeton University and several
other prestigious institutions decided to take
a look at the evidence to determine whether it
supported or refuted the hypothesis that money
does not make people happy. Drs. Kahneman, Krueger
and their colleagues have analyzed the available
data collected by other researchers over time,
and have recently published their findings in
Science.
They have concluded that the belief that high
income leads to happiness, although widespread,
is false. Their studies suggest that people with
above average income, while relatively satisfied
with their lives, are barely any happier than
others with lower income. If anything, they tend
to be more stressed, and do not spend any more
time engaged in enjoyable activities than others
with lower incomes.
While money was not linked to satisfaction, the
authors did find that a family has to have a minimum
level of earning to be comfortable. However, once
this threshold is reached, additional money did
not contribute to a feeling of greater happiness
or contentment.
In support of their theory, the authors have cited
the example of Japan, where general income between
1958 and 1987 rose five times, but there was no
corresponding increase in the feeling of contentment
or well-being, as assessed in a survey of the
population. Also, it has been a common observation
that people wining big money in lotteries are
very happy initially, but the feeling is only
temporarily. Soon, they get used to their new
status, and, thereafter, the usual pattern of
happiness and sadness is reestablished. Similarly,
employees receiving promotions or big salary increases
from their companies experience a transient feeling
of euphoria, giving way to the usual frustrations
of everyday life.
Why does money have no enduring effect on people’s
feeling of well-being and happiness? A number
of reasons have been advanced by the authors to
explain their conclusions. Dr. Krueger, one of
the leading authors of the paper, is quoted as
saying that once people’s income rises above
the level of poverty, there is not much the money
can do to relieve the stresses in their daily
lives, such as concerns they might have about
their children, worries related to their domestic
lives or stresses arising from professional difficulties.
Also, as earnings rise, people quickly get accustomed
to it, and their needs for more consumer goods
and desire for a more affluent lifestyle develop
concurrently.
Some other factor may also be relevant. Coincident
with the rise in their income, most people start
to spend more time in work-related activities,
investing longer hours at their office or business,
rather than in pleasurable pursuits, such as sports,
exercise or even socializing. The authors speculate
that the super rich in America, such as Bill Gates
or Warren Buffett, probably never get an opportunity
to discover and enjoy simple pleasures of life
that are freely accessible to less affluent, because
of their punishing work schedules.
In their essay, the researchers pose the question:
why do most people willingly pursue a hectic and
frenzied lifestyle just to make more money, knowing
that it will not bring them extra happiness? The
simple answer is that most of us have been brought
up to equate more money with greater happiness.
Historically, we know that not everyone has subscribed
to this doctrine. Even before the results of modern
researches were available, the lives of the Sufi
saints of India in the medieval times provided
powerful lessons that fulfillment and contentment
is not dependent on money or possessions. Khwaja
Moinuddin Chisti, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, and
Nizamuddin Olia and many other Sufis led a life
of deprivation and poverty, while teaching a message
of universal peace and harmony to all mankind.
They had undoubtedly attained a state of transcendental
tranquility and contentment without acquiring
any worldly possessions or material comforts.
Modern science has not revealed any new sources
of serenity and enlightenment that had not been
already known to these sages centuries ago.
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