IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aeq/aeqsjb/v125_y2005_i1_q1_p131-144.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Money and Happiness: The Combined Effects of Wealth, Income and Consumption

Author

Listed:
  • Bruce Headey
  • Ruud Muffels
  • Mark Wooden

Abstract

The paper uses household economic panel data from five countries – Australia, Britain, Germany, Hungary and The Netherlands – to provide a reconsideration of the impact of economic well-being on happiness. The main conclusion is that happiness is considerably more affected by economic circumstances than previously believed. In all five countries wealth affects life satisfaction more than income. In the countries for which consumption data are available (Britain and Hungary), non-durable consumption expenditures also prove at least as important to happiness as income.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruce Headey & Ruud Muffels & Mark Wooden, 2005. "Money and Happiness: The Combined Effects of Wealth, Income and Consumption," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 125(1), pages 131-144.
    • Handle: RePEc:aeq:aeqsjb:v125_y2005_i1_q1_p131-144
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Janusz Stacewicz & Anna Horodecka, 2011. "Problem definiowania dobrobytu i wartości w ekonomii i jego znaczenie dla polityki gospodarcze," Prace i Materiały, Instytut Rozwoju Gospodarczego (SGH), vol. 85(1), pages 9-47, January.
    2. Thomas Hansen & Britt Slagsvold & Torbjørn Moum, 2008. "Financial Satisfaction in Old Age: A Satisfaction Paradox or a Result of Accumulated Wealth?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 89(2), pages 323-347, November.
    3. Bernhard Christoph, 2010. "The Relation Between Life Satisfaction and the Material Situation: A Re-Evaluation Using Alternative Measures," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 98(3), pages 475-499, September.
    4. Pudney, Stephen, 2008. "Heaping and leaping: survey response behaviour and the dynamics of self-reported consumption expenditure," ISER Working Paper Series 2008-09, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    5. Umakrishnan Kollamparambil, 2021. "Non‐income effect of land ownership and tenure on subjective wellbeing in South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 89(2), pages 301-323, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aeq:aeqsjb:v125_y2005_i1_q1_p131-144. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gabriele Freudenmann (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.duncker-humblot.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.