MyTake

During the monsoon of 2005, I was in Hongkong for an international seminar on Happiness and Public Policy at Lignan University. One of the evenings while we visited IFC mall, a big board displayed in one of the lobbies of the mall caught my attention which read as - Whoever said money can’t buy you happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping. It seemed as if shopping made people happy provided one had money to spend. Elizabeth Dunn of University of British Columbia suggested through research that spending money on others makes us happier than spending for ourselves and further it is the experiences that we pay for adds to our happiness much more than the material things that we buy. Investing in others makes us feel happier and healthier even when it might make us poorer by few bucks. Seminal contribution of Richard Easterlin (Easterlin Paradox) help us understand the relationship between money and happiness much better. Increase in incomes (at national level) does not