Money and Happiness

Quick and worthwhile reading: an article from the 2006 summer edition of Moneysense magazine titled Professor of Happiness. I especially like and agree with the perspective of this quote - "People with money have more freedom than others to construct their lives around activities that provide both meaning and pleasure." The advice on how to give money its proper place and perspective makes a lot of sense.

Such advice may be lost on Canadians who are already quite happy it seems. The First Ever Map of World Happiness ranks Canada the 10th happiest country in the world, ahead of the USA (23rd) and the UK (41st). The ranking has probably gone up some recently, with Canada winning the world curling championships for both men and women. Of course, the NHL playoffs aren't over and the world hockey championships are about to begin so that figure may yet rise or fall.

Those with an academic bent can examine the seemingly serious attempts by economists to quantify the relationship between money and happiness, complete with log-scale graphs, at the Freakonomics blog in a series on the The Economics of Happiness.