

Chilled out: poll contradicts what we thought we knew about income & happiness - cs702
http://www.economist.com/node/21548213

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jgarmon
1) Self-reported happiness is an EXTREMELY unreliable indicator, as the social
pressure to "seem happy" is very real and very different by culture, class and
educational level

2) Happiness and income are relational in that we've seen over and over again
people are most happy not by being objectively "rich" but simply objectively
richer than their peer group. "Poor" countries with a growing middle class see
themselves as having -- or at least with the potential to have -- more than
the median material wealth of their peer group. "rich" countries with
shrinking middle classes have the opposite expectation.

Bottom line, this is merely a very clumsy study

