Читать книгу Wealth - Yuval Elmelech - Страница 25

It is reasonable to expect that economic status would be strongly linked to people’s sense of well-being. Empirical support for this hypothesis has been feeble, however, as only weak associations are shown between income and subjective measures of well-being such as happiness and life satisfaction. These surprising findings have recently been questioned. One line of criticism asserts that, while income is indeed weakly correlated with life satisfaction, wealth is a more robust indicator of living standards and economic security. Because asset ownership tends to lower financial worries and to elevate financial satisfaction, it has a strong effect on mental health status, measured both in well-being (happiness and satisfaction) and in ill-being (anxiety, depression, and distress) (Headey and Wooden 2004; Headey et al. 2008; see review in Zavisca and Gerber 2016).

The unique role of wealth in QOL outcomes has also emerged in research aimed at explaining the satisfaction paradox—namely, the fairly high levels of financial satisfaction among older adults, in spite of their low levels of reported income. Here, too, the paradox is partly explained by the relatively high levels of accumulated wealth and low levels of debt that older people have (Hansen et al. 2008; Headey and Wooden 2004; Hochman and Skopek 2013). Another explanation for the impact of asset ownership on well-being centers on changes in owners’ cognitive reality: the durability of their assets broadens their opportunity structures and allows for greater autonomy, prediction, and control over their future (Sherraden 1991; CFED 2013; Yamada and Sherraden 1996).

Not surprisingly, the association between wealth holdings and subjective well-being also takes the form of unfavorable psychological outcomes generated by substantial loss of property and wealth (Shiller 2008). While acknowledging the challenge of establishing causality, Tsai’s (2015) meta-analysis cites numerous studies that identify the adverse effects of home foreclosure on mental health.