Reading Time: 2 minutes Comparing rates of happiness across countries can be tricky, given cultural, economic and social differences that testing may not capture. However, while some “outliers” defy the idea that wealthier nations are happier – Nigeria is very happy; Japan, not so much – other factors, such as age, marriage and jobs, regularly show up in happiness …
Reading Time: 2 minutes Economics may be a great science for understanding numbers, but it does a poor job of predicting wellbeing. “When income exceeds a certain threshold, it no longer brings more happiness,” according to the “Easterlin paradox.” Within a country, the rich are generally happier than the poor, but that’s not true over time or in comparisons …
Reading Time: 2 minutes Health and Happiness Worldwide, health is the major variable that influences joy, even more than money. Contented people are healthier, and healthy people are more content. In the developed nations of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), the higher the blood pressure, the lower the happiness level, and vice versa, indicating a “virtuous …
Reading Time: 2 minutes Happiness matters greatly in both philosophy and economics. Aristotle said that happiness is the supreme good, the end to which everything else is a means. However, he defined happiness quite differently than economists do today. In Aristotle’s view, happiness was not a matter of pleasure but a matter of morality. The moral person was happy. …
Reading Time: 2 minutes Happiness is a foundation stone of economic science. People make economic choices – what salary to accept, what product to buy, whether to invest – in order to become happy. The pursuit of happiness clearly matters in economics, even though economists usually speak of it in jargon, substituting such words as “utility” for “happiness.” The …
Reading Time: 2 minutes “The single biggest threat to our own well-being tends to be ourselves.” Do you experience a strong sense of well-being every day? Such contentment depends on more than just financial security, physical health or some other beneficial attribute. If you work to improve in one or two areas, but ignore the others, you will not …
Reading Time: 2 minutes “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough” (Mae West). Younger generations embrace a way of life often called “YOLO,” for “You only live once.” Yet we need to find a way, as an individual, to build a personal life based on mindfulness and vision in order to live productively …
Reading Time: < 1 minute Englishman Jeremy Bentham was the first philosopher to posit a pragmatic “greatest happiness principle.” He said that the greatest civilization has the happiest citizenry and, therefore, policies that increase the happiness of the largest number of people are the best ones to follow. However, until recently, little was known about human happiness, and governments stopped …
Reading Time: 2 minutes Though your inner feelings change many times during the course of a day, everyone has a baseline level of happiness. Evidence suggests that people with high baseline levels of happiness live longer, healthier lives than those with low baseline levels. People feel attracted to things that produce pleasure and avoid things that cause pain. You …
Reading Time: 2 minutes Anyone can be happy temporarily. The trick is to maintain this happiness throughout your life. Use the below five happiness “hows” to understand happiness better: Stay positive – Would you feel positive if a game show host knocked on your door to give you a check for a million dollars? You know you would. Unfortunately, the …
