For decades now, scientists have been trying to figure out what role wealth plays in our satisfaction with life. While some studies have found that money doesn’t buy happiness (at least not beyond a certain income point), others have found money plays a much more significant role. Wealthier countries seem happier overall, and citizens in those countries enjoy more well-being as their income climbs.
But a new study brings another wrinkle to the conversation. Previous studies have tended to focus on people in wealthier, Western, urbanized countries. This one looked at those living in small-scale, rural communities that depend on nature for livelihoods, with no or little cash income. Some are Indigenous; most are located in Africa, South America, and Asia. Their results yield new insights into the relationship between money and happiness.
Smaller communities, bigger happiness
As part of a larger study of the effects of climate change, researchers surveyed almost 3,000 people living in 19 small communities around the world about how satisfied they were with their lives on a scale of 0 to 10. Since the communities studied didn’t have formal cash-based economies or record-keeping, household income was estimated from the market value of assets that would have been purchased with cash, when available.
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In analyzing the results, researchers found a wide range of life satisfaction between individuals—but the patterns were quite different from similar studies in other parts of the world. While Indigenous people with greater personal income were slightly more satisfied with life than those with less income, overall, they were much happier than their Western counterparts even at very low incomes. In fact, people living in these small-scale societies reported an average score of 6.8 out of 10, even though most of them lived on less than the equivalent of $1,000 per year.
These are very different results than what you might find in the Gallup Poll or World Values Survey, both of which look at how income affects life satisfaction. For example, people in the Gallup Poll didn’t report these levels of happiness until they reached the $25,000 level of income. To study author Eric Galbraith, this suggests that income is not necessarily strongly tied to happiness for everyone, and that these polls are missing the mark.
“Basically, these small-scale societies show that there are powerful ways to achieve life satisfaction that are not apparent from looking at industrialized societies alone,” he says.
Interestingly, though, living in a particular village mattered when it came to life satisfaction—some villages tended to have happier people in them than others. However, the difference wasn’t related to the overall income in that community, unlike what seems to be the case in Western countries and even in smaller, non-Western countries around the world.
This may seem counterintuitive, given the tie between individual wealth and happiness among the villagers. That’s probably because the connection to income is so weak that other factors dominate, says Galbraith.
He speculates that the differences in happiness levels between villages are probably due to other, non-economic factors associated with living in these communities—such as feeling more closely connected to nature, living in a more interdependent community, not having a lot of wealth inequality, or not experiencing social ills like those you might find in a more industrialized society, such as drug addiction.
More than money
Though we can’t know for sure why people in these communities report being so satisfied with life, we should still take note of these findings, says Galbraith.
For one thing, he says, researchers have not been including the views of Indigenous people in worldwide happiness reports; so, the reports (like Gallup and the World Values Survey) may be skewed toward finding a stronger relationship between income and well-being than is warranted.
In addition, governments may be creating policies aimed at increasing citizen income to improve life satisfaction without considering other, important factors for the happiness of their communities.
Regardless of what explains the high satisfaction in these communities, we can still learn from their example. One potential takeaway is that we should question the assumption that greater income leads to greater happiness, says Galbraith. Perhaps, we should realize that living in a consumer-based, ad-filled world is making us think we need more money than we have, and creating a desire for something irrelevant to our well-being.
Instead, we may want to pay closer attention to other findings from the science of happiness to understand what makes for the good life, says Galbraith—whether that’s being in close connection with nature, strengthening our social bonds, or removing inequalities among us.
“The fact that rich people tend to be more satisfied with their lives can make it seem that having lots of money is the clearest route to happiness,” says Galbraith. “But the things that truly make people happy don’t need to cost money. There really are other ways to get to a satisfying life.”
