Marriage, Money and Children as sources for your happiness

I came across this article about a presentation that Prof. Daniel Gilbert - Harvard professor of psychology.

In the article, Prof. Gilbert made references to his late mother's receipe for happiness - marriage, money, and children. He said that married people "...Married people are happier than unmarried people. They are healthier, live longer, have more sex,...". In addition to just being married, the quality of marriage is another factor, and is closely related to the level of happiness. This actually is no surprise, right? If you are not very miserable in your marriage, how could you be happy.

The next factor is the money factor. He said that money has diminishing return on the level of happiness. The sweet spot is about 50,000-70,000 USD. Thinking about this a little more, I can see that, like other things, the diniminshing return of money that one has does make sense.

"children" were the next thing that he discussed. Surprisingly, children were not the source of happiness. In contary, couples see reduction in their happiness when they started having children. According to Prof. Gilbert, “The only symptom of empty nest syndrome, is nonstop smiling.” If I understand the article, the affects of children to a couples is not the happiness that the children brought to them, but rather magic moments that they brought about. I guess we will have to wait until we actually have our own children.

Don't forget to check-out Prof. Gilbert's best seller Stumbling on Happiness, I am sure will get a copy to read. Hope they do have them at the library.