This seems obvious. Having no money is very stressful. Stress not only makes you generally very unhappy - it actually damages your brain (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15511597). Stress is an unhealthy thing to experience, especially when it is constant and your mind and body do not have time to recover. In small doses, a little stress keeps you moving, but its benefits drop off pretty quickly the more stress you experience.
Thus it stands to reason that if a major source of stress is removed (a lack of financial stability) that your overall happiness level goes up.
Depends on where/how you live and how much "value" you place on money. I think one could also argue that money causes stress depending on how much you have and how you got/maintain it.
Here's what I think:
- If you're born into money, money = happiness if you follow & believe in what the family wants you to do.
- If you started a business that made you money, money = happiness more than half the time
- If you got huge amounts of money suddenly, money = problems.
There are communities that doesnt even have a economy based on money, and are pretty happy.. there are indigenous people in reserves here and brazil and also some remote parts of africa that i know of.. (i imagine theres even more samples)
If you start to look to them, they have a pretty smart way to achieve happyness without money.. they are very collective types in nature.. and not individualistic as we do.. the nature gives them everything they might need.. they dont have the same views on posession as we do.. like indians in brazil sleep in big open houses(ocas) with a little community in each one.. they even have rituals to exchange sexual partners (they do not possess each other like we do with engagements or marriage)..
So their reality are pretty different from our own.. and the white man doom their type of civilization, with the concept of money, properties, and greed basically..
So the lack of money is only stressful for people who need to care about money..
just to make it clear: im not saying they live the perfect life.. but both types of civilizations have things to teach one another.. we have things to teach, but we also have things to learn.. things that we lost in the way..
What we constantly see, is the "white man" notion of superiority, and therefore that he has nothing to learn, from "primitives"..
But the irony is that they have a lot to teach us..
Our societies are very complex, and one of the reasons for that is the infinite chain of the desire and need.. need this, need that.. never satisfied, never happy..
Being poor its not the problem, the problem its us.. the way we think and reproduce our lives and destiny.. looking at them can teach us a lot about ourselves and where we are doing wrong