measuring satisfaction

Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All, by David Leonhardt

Comments

[Andy]

Hmmmmmmm! Nice picture but not sure about the story. The money bit does explain some of the variance in happiness, but there's lots of other stuff going on there, e.g., what's causing the difference between Bulgaria and Costa Rica; Hong Kong and Denmark.

[Nikko]

Interesting.

I was just in Japan and can see how one does not need to make a lot of money to rate themselves as having a high quality of life. Generally the public space is very important: excellent subway and bus transportation systems, very little number of cars which resulted in clean air that I have never experienced in any city (let alone some suburbs), smoking is illegal on the street (acutally witnessed a woman getting a ticket for doing so) no public garbage cans or distribution of toilet paper. Amazingly there was NO litter.