Money Only Makes You Happy If You Have More Than Neighbours

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Despite the vast improvements in general standards of living in the past 40 years across Britain, "keeping up with the Joneses" is still our biggest aspiration,1 a new study suggests. Researchers have found that owning a fast car, a large home and having a good job may only make you happy if those around you are less well off.

The pursuit of wealth is leading more people to work longer hours as they seek to pay their mortgages and climb the social ladder.1 Dr. Chris Boyce, of University of Warwick's psychology department, said Britons were victims of chronic'dissatisfaction. He looked at the responses to questions of more than 10,000 people in the British Household Panel Survey over seven years about their level of happiness and compared the responses with their income.

The responses showed people were most happy when they had more than their neighbours. Dr. Boyce said: "The standard of living has gone up for each individual over the past 40 years but it has gone up for everyone. So our cars are faster now but our neighbours have faster cars too, so they haven't got that advantage over people close to you. Without ...
... the biggest home, or the fastest car then it doesn't give you that same excitement as it would have." Dr. Boyce said that pursuit of wealth alone was a vicious circle'. Business in the Middle East is based on the concept of the family. According to the Qur'an, a family must take care of its members. A family has a holy obligation toward its members. The family orientation seems to fit the Japanese group structure,

A rise in income may benefit one person but it has a detrimental" effect on others. If I jump up two places in the rank, then the people I jumped ahead of go backwards," he said. "So a person does not just have to increase their rank they have to work hard just to keep up with rather than passing the Joneses." Dr. Boyce said the study found that relentless7 pursuit of economic growth would produce a wealthier society but not a happier one. Miep Gies: Savior of Anne Frank "I am not a hero," Mrs. Gies wrote in her memoir1, Anne Frank Remembered, published in 1987. "I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did and more— much more— during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the heart of those of us who bear witness."

By her own account3, Miep Gies did nothing extraordinary. All she did was bring food, and books, and news— and, on one fabulous day, red high-heeled shoes4— to friends who needed them. It was nothing dramatic5. But she also bought eight people time, and in that time one of her charges— a teenage girl called Anne Frank, the recipient of the shoes— wrote a diary of life in the "Annexe". In these four rooms, above the office of Anne's father, Otto, where Mrs. Gies worked as a secretary, eight Jews hid for 25 months in Amsterdam in 1942-44.