Valuing time over money is associated with greater happiness

Post by bostik » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 6:24 AM UTC

lqdc13 wrote: post #103

roymurdock wrote: post #23

I searched for the phrase "diminishing marginal returns" but could not find it in the article which seems like a bit of an omission. This is a fundamental economic concept - the more of something you have, the less value you derive from each incremental unit. So, based on personal preferences, once you reach a certain level of income you will start to substitute away from labor (income) towards leisure/free time (non…

Yup. If you look at table 3, which is a study of the museum going group, you can actually see that SWB (subjective well being) is mostly correlated with household income and material affluence. However in table 3a, we can see that SWB is negatively correlated with material striving. In other words, people who are concentrated on making money are the people who don't have money and are also unhappy. People who value t…

Post by Terr_ » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 6:42 AM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #124

raquo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just as well say that the cent that buys you a soda has a bigger marginal utility than the previous one. Sure, maybe in the context of that one transaction, but not in any general way.

Except that paying off your proximate debt and securing a place to live is far more important, from a Maslow sense, than buying a soda?

Post by lucaspiller » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 7:00 AM UTC

manachar wrote: post #2

I wonder if this is behind the greater happiness of people with incomes over 75K per year. They actually have enough money to pay for goods and services that save them time.

Post by dclowd9901 » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 7:08 AM UTC

lmartel wrote: post #68

thejacenxpress wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

small unrepresentative sample size. a problem many studies have issues with.

I agree with the unrepresentative part, but absolute sample size numbers don't tell you anything. For some experiments, N=100 is more than enough, and for others N=10000 isn't even close. Did you look at the p-values or any other confidence measurements?

Post by tonyedgecombe » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 7:42 AM UTC

meowface wrote: post #77

hammock wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"diminishing marginal returns" I came to a different conclusion. The wealth of time (total man-hours or aggregated lifespans) is more evenly distributed across a population than is the wealth of money. Therefore, to the extent that happiness is influenced by comparing how well-off you are vs others, a person picked at random will be pretty damn close to the same standing as whoever is the Time-Richest Person in the…

A wealthy person is much more likely to be time-rich than a poor person, though.