The Happiness Equation: Does Poverty Affect Happiness?

How often do people stop and think about where they are born, and what they are born into? Thinking about this question may make one grateful for the life they live or reflect on all of the hurt, brokenness, and hardship they have dealt with. Although there are many views of where happiness comes from, personal encounters with impoverished peopled has the ability to drastically change one’s view of where ultimate happiness comes from.

Possible Sources of Happiness

Looking around the world at all of the countries, about 80 percent of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. This statistic helps explain that a vast amount of this world is living in developing countries that are poverty stricken because this means of the 8 billion people living in the world, 6 hundred four hundred million people live on less than 10 dollars a day. Looking through the lens of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), happiness was looked at around the world in a money perspective. The UNDP defines poverty as “a lack and state of ill-being, inferior to wealth regarded as a state of abundance and well-being” (Schimmel, 2009). They focused their attention on poverty, wealth and development rather than focusing on the well-being aspect of poverty. This study indicated that the higher income countries have higher life satisfaction rates. A similar outcome was found by a study conducted in Thailand. It used used various sociodemographic and socioeconomic determinants in this developing country. The researchers suggested that income does indeed have statistically significant effect on happiness (Rukumnuaykit, 2016). One of the other large determinants to happiness in this study was marital status. Economically speaking having a higher income results in a person being better off, and to be better off is to be happier (Saunders, 1996). There was a study done in Australia called the Australian Standard of Living Study the correlation between income and happiness was positive. Now, Australia is said to be a first-world country, this means that there are more factors than income alone that are involved in subjective happiness around the world.

A key factor in understanding a multidementional issue is to acknowledge there are more factors than just income that produces happiness. One of these factors is social comparison has an effect on how people rate their overall happiness. A common belief states that people make social comparisons with others in their community and their happiness declines when others have an increase in income or possessions (Hagerty, 2000). There are two ways in which people compare to their community do people compare themselves to the richest and the poorest, ignoring all others or do they rank themselves in the distribution of all people? The community study done by Hagerty concluded that people do both, and this leads to a decrease in subjective happiness due to a constant comparison to what people do not have. Another factor is education and how it plays a role in happiness levels of people, both directly and indirectly. Looking at Spain, the European Social Survey studied how there are socio-economic indicators such as GDP, but more significantly quality of life factors such as health, education, unemployment, environment and contamination (Cuañdo, 2012).

In conclusion of this study they’ve found that there is an indirect effect on happiness because people with higher income levels do have a higher probability of finding employment and report higher levels of happiness. As well as education has a positive impact on happiness in the sense that it provides a sense of self-confidence and self-esteem leading to reported higher levels of happiness. If GDP, comparison in community, education, and quality of life factors all have an effect on happiness levels, what else plays a role in subjective happiness?

Relationship with others and leisurely activities affect the way we view happiness. People living in Leon Nicaragua who work in the garbage dumps were interviewed to talk about their lives and life satisfaction. There were 99 people interviewed from the garbage dump whom lived in extreme poverty. All of them reported being extremely happy and had optimistic outlooks on the future. They reported their happiness did not come from their job title, or their income, but rather from the social relationships and leisurely activities they were partaking in (Vazquez, 2013). Families who together make a low income, have more unity within their families and in their community; this sense of community lead to increase rates of happiness. The people of Leon explain how a sense of togetherness and a decrease in loneliness directly correlated with an increase of optimistic future ideas, leading to feelings of happiness (Vazquez, 2013). Striving to be in relationship and community with others does more than decrease feelings of loneliness Duncan says that if we do community the ways the Lord wants us to, we experience an abundance of grace and love, which in return gives us joy. We are given free will to choose to love people and when we chose to love, we enter full communion with the Lord.

Once we have entered full communion with the Lord we can reach our full potential as individuals (Duncan, 2008). Matthew 18:20 says, “For where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them.” Jesus calls on us to be in community in His name. Ultimately there are many different factors that result in the feelings of subjective happiness, from money to leisurely activities and community.

Happiness Apart from Economics

Happiness can be defined as “the degree to which an individual judges the overall quality of his life-as-a-whole” (Schimmel, 2009). In the preceding section it was demonstrated that there seemed to be a trend in the results. Poverty around the world is often times viewed as a negative way of life. People who live in poverty are often times viewed as inferior or incapable of finding happiness, usually due to the lacking ability to make enough money or find opportunities to be successful. Looking at people through an economic lens leads one to believe that people in poverty struggle to find happiness on a daily basis. Countries with a higher GDP report having people with higher life satisfaction (Schimmel, 2009). Looking at money being a large factor happiness poses some questions. If someone is born in poverty, how do they know that life with more money will be better than the one they are living? Also, what are people living in richer countries doing with the money they have that causes them to be much ‘happier’ than those who aren’t?

There is also the view that people living in poverty actually have successful lives full of happiness and success. This view stems from the idea that there are more factors to happiness than just money. Some of the other indicators of happiness that were researched are health, education, family, community/activities, and stability. This indicates that subjective happiness is not primarily based on economic status but rather the life outside of occupation. The research tends to be more focused on the idea that poverty is a lack of happiness, but the question remains, within the people who are conducting the experiments/surveys. Are they bias to thinking a certain way due to the life they are living and their own personal views? How can we truly know that these factors are the sources of happiness when we aren’t the ones living in poverty?

Authentic Happiness

Research often answers many questions. One researched questions being; does poverty affect levels of subjective happiness? The general argument made by Shimmel in his work, Development as Happiness, is that income is a predominant factor to happiness. More specifically, he argues that when a country has higher GDP, the people living in that country are usually better off in the sense of life satisfaction. He also explains how people who have higher income levels are more successful because they have more opportunities to find success. In conclusion, Shimmel believes that overall people in poverty have a lower rate of objective happiness. In my view, I think he is wrong in saying that happiness is dependent on income levels. I agree more with Cunado when he says “First, monetary socio-economic indicators (such as per capita GDP) have been found to be insufficient measures of the well-being of citizens” (Cuando, 2012). There is more to the happiness equation than income. I side more with the passage by Stromann, in his Multidimensional Poverty Index and Happiness when he says, “poverty analyses should not be limited only to income, as people may suffer from a lack of capabilities in additional respects” (Stromann, 2018). This view of poverty allows for the ideas that people who are living in impoverished conditions find joy in a life that they are familiar with. A life that they know, people in poverty have opportunities of their own and don’t need first world opportunities that researchers believe that they do. There are more opportunities to seek joy than just in a statistic about income.

Again, we see the general argument that income levels in poverty stricken areas, as well as around the world, do affect subjective happiness. More specifically he argues, “Income has no effect on life satisfaction while having a statistically significant effect on happiness.” In this passage Rukumnauaykit is suggesting that happiness is the ultimate goal in life and through statistics he claims that higher income has a direct correlation with higher levels of happiness. In my view he is wrong when he says that he can conclude happiness from these statistics. My view goes hand in hand with the idea written in “Human Development in Poor Countries: by Anand and Ravalloin. The general argument in their work was that there has been a shift in the ways we view people living in poverty, and the way we view development.

More specifically they argue that we should not be looking directly at income level for our ideas about happiness but rather “discuss the goal of development (which is) now often emphasize by the reduction of poverty, rather raising average incomes” (Anand & Ravallion, 1993). With this approach in mind we can see that there is a shift in the idea of development, moving towards an approach associated with the goal of development being outside of income. This closely relates with another article titled Happiness in Developing Countries. Dowling explains how the idea of “The Good Life” came about during the ancient Greek time period and the idea that individuals can seek their own happiness (Dowling, 2013). I agree with these articles when thinking about poverty. How do we know that people living in poverty stricken areas want bigger houses, and want more items, the typical things people in 1stworld countries view as happiness.

The general argument made by Vazquez in his work, Happiness among the garbage, Is that happiness is not all about the amount of money you make, but rather the people you surround yourself with and the activities you do. He writes, “We (people living in the garbage dumps) don’t care about how much money we make or where we work, we just care about who we are working with (Vazquez, 2013).” In this passage Vazquez is suggesting that we can find happiness in low-income settings through the community we live in and the activities we enjoy doing. In my view Vazquez is right because he stresses the importance of community, and having people you enjoy being around, help provide you joy in life; especially through the struggles of life. Therefore I conclude that income is not the sole predictor of happiness in poverty stricken areas.

Poverty is a highly talked about concept around the world. Poverty seems to be one thing most people agree we could get rid of, we just aren’t sure how. The research provided above has indicated a few things: income has an effect on levels of objective happiness and there are more factors that play into objective happiness outside of income level.

One thing we see in the research siding with the view that income has a lot to do with objective happiness, is that the research is being done using statistics such as strictly the amount of money made by each individual person living in poverty. They take those numbers and attach feelings to them, to make it seem as though people who make a smaller income, have smaller amounts of joy. One argument I would make against this is that the people doing the research are from 1stworld countries, so their views about the materials that provide happiness are more expensive than those of the people living in poverty. Putting yourself in the shoes of the people you are trying to gain information about, helps open our eyes to the lives they are truly living and helps us get a better sense of the joys and struggles of that style of living. Secondly, looking at the view that expresses people living in poverty take other parts of their lives into consideration when thinking about subjective happiness. This view helps us see that things like, health, education, community, family, and activities bring joy to people as well. One might counter argue this and say that with more income, comes more opportunity to finding success; through acquiring assets. To that I argue that acquiring assets might not always be what brings us joy. Does the more we have automatically mean the more happiness we have? Especially looking at the community aspect of places to find happiness, I view this as a very important aspect to happiness, having people help and support us in the things we do, helps to push and motivate us in the ways we might not be able to ourselves.

Application for today

This topic is important in society right now because we have the ability to change the way we perceive people around the world, and the ways we chose to love on them. Jesus explains to us in 1 Peter 4:8 “Above everything, love one another earnestly, because love covers over many sins.” Although there are controversial views about the ways we view happiness amongst those living in poverty, if we choose to love and support one another, we could rule out the idea of poverty all together. Solving a major problem that has been around since the beginning of time essentially.

A Personal Source of Happiness

In conclusion with all of this information presented the way we can move forward with this knowledge is to find out for ourselves. Find out what brings us joy individually and assess where we place our priorities. Next step, to find out for ourselves about poverty stricken areas. What are the people like, asking them what brings them joy individually and see if it aligns with the information we have gained through this research. In my personal life, I have had the opportunity to travel to 3 poverty stricken countries, and my views about the people living in poverty align with the view that money is not everything, and there is so much joy in the hearts of those who live in poverty. Take a trip, and find out for yourself what a different style of life is like. Having personal encounters with impoverished people has the ability to drastically change ones view of where ultimate happiness comes from.

Bibliography

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