Money Makes Way For Happiness,

But it doesn't buy happiness: rather it can and often does create conditions for greater contentment, less anxiety etc. Read about it in this article, WorldChanging: Money Makes Way For Happiness, But Happiness Still Can't Be Bought: "income is actually a much better metric for happiness than we ever thought it was,” says Stevenson. It appears that the wealthier we and our countries are, the happier we are, overall. And, says Will Wilkinson, research fellow with the Cato Institute, double the income per capita in a country and you’ll get a significant increase in happiness."
This doesn't mean that we must keep increasing GDP to keep people happy; we need to attend to what it is that greater income has tended to 'deliver' to societies which is things like choices, less anxiety, a sense of security. Policy, in a resource-limited world, should concentrate on creating conditions for health, a sense of security and the ability to make choices. Much of this can be done in terms of good communities and proper social protections...