Charting the Relationship Between Wealth and Happiness, by Country(visualcapitalist.com)
visualcapitalist.com
Charting the Relationship Between Wealth and Happiness, by Country
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/relationship-between-wealth-and-happiness-by-country/
2 comments
Thank you for posting.
Firstly, the line of best fit has a fairly large standard deviation across all the data here, meaning it's not as amazing a correlation as it might seem. More importantly, rather than assuming cause and effect, I highly suspect the reason for the trend at all is a third common factor. In the chart regarding inequality vs happiness, the line of best fit (since that's what the article likes to examine) has a negative slope. You may also notice that many of the countries with lowest inequality... are also countries with highest average wealth. And I don't think that's a coincidence.
Obviously there's more to happiness than quantifiable monetary value, but I suspect if we examined a 3D chart combining average wealth, income inequality, and happiness, we'd see a new pattern emerge, one which shows that more population-wide wealth simply provides an easier opportunity to share that wealth, which results in higher happiness (as far as money-induced happiness goes, at least).