Surely you've heard the saying that money can't buy happiness. I know I have, time and time again. But it turns out that money CAN buy you happiness. So the idea has always been that once basic needs are met, having more money will not necessarily make you happier. Well new analysis pretty much debunks that theory and notices that the trend across countries (both rich and poor) and among people (both rich and poor) is that the relationship between money and well-being (happiness) is linear and never reaches a saturation point. That means more money, more happy.
See! I knew it! I knew rich people were happier. Sheesh, I know I'd be happier if I were rolling in the dough. No, you don't have to be rolling in the dough to be happy, but it certainly doesn't hurt.
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Totally reminds me of something that my mother said to an overpriviledged rich kid once. He was complaining to her that having money was a burden and really not what it was cracked up to be. She looked at him and asked, "You've never been poor, have you?" No shit, Sherlock!
Well, now that we know what we already knew: that being rich makes it a whole lot easier to be happy, let's move on to something else that being rich helps with as well. Education. The children of the rich do better on average than the children of both the middle class and the poor. Hmmm, I wonder why? According to research conducted by Sean F. Reardon, a professor of education and sociology at Stanford:
"Money helps families provide cognitively stimulating experiences for their young children because it provides more stable home environments, more time for parents to read to their children, access to higher-quality child care and preschool and–in places like New York City, where 4-year-old children take tests to determine entry into gifted and talented programs–access to preschool test preparation tutors or the time to serve as tutors themselves."
His solution to the issue is nothing new, but for some reason something we as a society refuse to embrace. Here's his take:
So how can we move toward a society in which educational success is not so strongly linked to family background? Maybe we should take a lesson from the rich and invest much more heavily as a society in our children's educational opportunities from the day they are born. Investments in early-childhood education pay very high societal dividends. That means investing in developing high-quality child care and preschool that is available to poor and middle-class children. It also means recruiting and training a cadre of skilled preschool teachers and child care providers. These are not new ideas, but we have to stop talking about how expensive and difficult they are to implement and just get on with it.
What is the take-away from all this information about the benefits of being rich? That rich people need to quit their bitchin' about how hard it is to manage all that money and just go on and admit that it is FRIGGIN' awesome or step aside and give the rest of us a turn.
Image via blatantworld/Flickr
