Although Britons are twice as rich as they were in 1987, they are no happier. The lack of relationship between wealth and happiness has long been common knowledge, and the knowledge itself has long been a source of happiness to moralisers who like the fact that money is not life's answer. There are, though, two confusions involved in the idea that anything significant can be discovered by looking for a correlation between wealth and happiness. One concerns the nature of happiness, the other the nature of wealth.

If you could arrange for Britain's population to make a sudden return to 1987 levels of income and possessions, almost everybody would be unhappy. As wealth increases, so do expectations, and so does being accustomed to the lifestyle that the new level of wealth brings. For most people it is likely that wealth has to improve in order for their happiness level to remain constant; if their wealth were to decline, so would their happiness. The important point is that ''happiness'' is too vague and baggy a notion to be truly helpful. It may be likened to an old pair of knickers that have lost their elastic and become over-capacious and shapeless.

Instead of talking about happiness, one should talk about satisfaction, achievement, interest, engagement, enjoyment, growth and the constant opening of fresh possibilities. Very often the activities that yield these things are challenging, even effortful. A person in the midst of doing something objectively worthwhile might not describe oneself as happy - usually he/she will be too absorbed to notice - and only later will realise that what it is to be happy is to be absorbed in something worthwhile. *Happiness comes as a sideline of other endeavours that in themselves bring satisfaction and a sense of achievement.* It is like the dot of light in a dark room that one cannot see when looking directly at it, but notices out of the corner of one's eye on looking away.

 

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