Does Consuming More Increase Well-Being? Is Getting Rich the Path to Happiness?

What increases and decreases WB, and for how long? Consuming more? Not so much—for long. I dive into the relationship between income and WB, including the Easterlin Paradox. While your income and consumption play a role, their roles are not huge once basic needs are met. So, to identify the influence of a change in income on emotional WB or life-satisfaction WB, one must separate out the effects of age, health, social institutions, gender, equality, genetics, personality, and relationships. And how long do WB shifts last? Our WB depends on our relative position, relative to others and to our former selves. [In my department, a raise that was dollar small but bigger than what others got seemed preferred to more dollars but fewer than what others got. And no one desires to make less than their brother-in-law.] Comparing to our former selves could explain why a loss of income decreases our WB more than a previous raise increased it. We compare on many dimensions besides income. Think about the loss of White privilege. I end with other theories of WB: you have a set point from which it is difficult to deviate from for long, WB is created not by consuming but by the right kind of doing, WB is driven by our relationships, and increasing WB is most easily achieved by reducing unnecessary ill-being (suffering).