Ronald Bailey Reports That Money Can Buy Happiness

|

Money Happiness
Credit: lodrakon: Dreamstime

"I've been rich and I've been poor. Believe me, honey, rich is better," the vaudevillian Sophie Tucker quipped. Tucker's witticism will not strike most of us as controversial. Yet some really smart people are anxious to persuade the rest of us that more money can't buy us more happiness. New research by two economists at the University of Michigan, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, finds that more money does buy more happiness. Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey delves into this oddly controversial claim.