Youth talk

I’m a self-professed economics nerd, and a friend of mine recently recommended Tim Harford’s brilliantly-written The Undercover Economist Strikes Back, which explores the complexities of major economies.

Within it, a concept known as ‘The Easterlin Paradox’ is mentioned, one which I found to be extremely pertinent to our modern world.

The paradox essentially states that while richer people are happier than poorer people; richer societies are not happier than poorer societies. How can this be? Surely, developed countries should be ‘happier’ than poorer ones?
The answer, as it usually is in our world, is human nature.

This is endlessly fascinating, because the research was conducted by economists Sara Solnick and David Hemenway who found that if you ask people whether they would rather have an income of $50,000 in a society where everyone-else has $25,000, or an income of $100,000 in a world where everyone-else had $200,000 … people tended to go for the first option even though they would get less money.

It’s all relative in the world that we live in. It’s not absolute wealth that we seek - it’s relative to the society we live in.