Eduardo tiene un post muy interesante sobre este tema.
La renta realmente importa: los niveles de satisfacción son más elevados en los países más ricos, y (al menos en EE.UU) las personas son doblemente "más felices" cuando ingresan 250.000 que cuando ingresan 30.000 dólares; en contra de las predicciones de Easterlin. Pero es mejor no tomarse el título de la entrada literalmente: la relación entre felicidad e ingresos sigue siendo compleja y esquiva. Los datos sugieren que las personas con ingresos inferiores a 30.000 dólares no serían más felices viviendo en países más pobres, y persisten importantes diferencias culturales, como que los brasileños sean el doble de felices que los búlgaros disponiendo del mismo nivel de renta.
Leyendo su entrada me he acordado de una brillante reflexión de Cowen sobre la relación entre felicidad y riqueza. Cowen argumenta que el capitalismo produce más felicidad, sino de una forma directa si de manera indirecta. Leedlo entero porque vale mucho la pena.
Destaco algunos fragmentos:
If a buy a Mercedes, my polled neighbor may express greater dissatisfaction with his Volkswagen. That same neighbor, if he had a Lada in Moscow, circa 1978, might express greater satisfaction on the questionnaire. Nonetheless in absolute terms he still prefers the Volkswagen in contemporary America. (...)
[W]e must ask which institutional structures give people the greatest opportunities to structure their lives to achieve their preferred forms of happiness or well-being. Some persons may seek temporary stimulations, others may want to feel fulfilled at the end of their lives, and others may seek to maximize the quality of their modal day. Some will seek happiness through out-competing their peers for status, while others will look inward. Again, greater opportunities and freedoms will likely favor the wealthier society in these regards. Well-being is not a single variable to be maximized; rather individuals prefer to structure the kinds of well-being or happiness they can achieve. (...)
[T]he questions are posed to individuals in normal life circumstances. The answers will not pick up the ability of wealthier economies to postpone or mitigate extreme tragedies, whether in the wealthier or poorer parts of our world. For instance the happiness measures, by their nature, do not pick up the benefits of greater life expectancy. The dead and incapacitated cannot complain about their situation, at least not in questionnaire form. If an immigrant, or a child of immigrants, fills out the form, there is no comparison with a pre-immigration state of affairs. By its very nature, happiness research draws upon a fixed pool of people in relatively normal circumstances.
