Money really doesn't buy happiness, study finds

At Last, It’s Official (From Breitbart.com.)

Money doesn't buy happiness, and now there's a study to prove it. Australian researchers found that people in well-off Sydney are among the most miserable in the country, while those in some of the poorest areas are much more satisfied with their lives.

"Only at very, very high levels does money actually have any impact to act as a buffer," said Deakin University researcher Liz Eckerman.

"Money doesn't actually buy happiness and that's what was shown very clearly for the nearly 23,000 people we've interviewed so far," she told ABC radio.

The findings, collated since 2001, show that while there are no extremes of well-being in Australia, the happiest areas had a lower population, more people aged 55 or over, more women, more married people and less income inequality.

The “more women” part probably makes for happier guys. The rest of it seems to revolve around stable families and less urban stress.

The survey assessed a person's satisfaction with their standard of living, health, relationships, life achievement, safety, community connection and future security.
Robert Cummins, a professor of psychology at Deakin who compiled the survey's scorecard, put the difference down to the higher cost of housing and high population density in cities.

"People in these rural electorates often have the advantage of additional disposable income since the cost of living, particularly housing, tends to be reduced outside the cities," he told The Australian newspaper.

The current secular template is that everything depends on economics (thank you, Karl Marx). Even when they come up with contradictory results, they have to force-fit an economic explanation onto their findings to make them fit that template. It’s really kind of sad.

Of the 150 national electorates surveyed, one of the nation's poorest, Wide Bay in rural Queensland, was among the happiest.

I wonder how much they spent on this research? Perhaps in their next study, they can definitively determine whether fools and their money really are soon parted. Wait – I guess they already did that.

Do not toil to acquire wealth; be wise enough to desist. (Pro 23:4, RSV)

A man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them; this is vanity; it is a sore affliction. (Ecc 6:2, RSV)

For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! (Luk 12:23-24, RSV)