Money Buys Happiness

Does more money bring more happiness? Economists have been arguing over the question for decades (and everybody else has been arguing over it forever).

Economist Justin Wolfers of the Wharton School, has spent hours poring over happiness surveys from 155 countries across the globe, and he says the data is clear:

The relationship between satisfaction, these measures of well-being and measures of average income, which would be gross domestic product per capita, is incredibly robust.

In other words, more money means more happiness.

On today's Planet Money, Wolfers talks about his research and explains its implications for public policy.

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