When Nina interviewed me for Queercents a few weeks ago, one of the questions she asked was “Does money buy happiness?” I answered “no,” though admitted that money can sometimes facilitate the things in which one finds happiness.
Turns out I was wrong. According to economist Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick, “There is overwhelming evidence that money buys happiness.” He studied British lottery winners and concluded they were happier two years after they won than two years before.
OK, it’s really not as simple as that, and economists (including at least one Nobel Prize winner) are still debating the exact connection between money and mood. What really caught my eye, however, was Oswald’s admission that despite his findings, money may not be the prime driver of happiness: “The quality of relationships has a far bigger effect than quite large rises in salary. . . . It’s much better advice, if you’re looking for happiness in life, to try to find the right husband or wife rather than trying to double your salary.”
Funny. That reminds me of a passage from the ruling in Loving v. Virginia, the U. S. Supreme Court case that struck down race-based restrictions on marriage: “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”
Legal marriage, however, isn’t free, further confusing the issue of money and happiness. It cost my partner and I nothing to consider ourselves married for the many years that we could not legally do so. We had to pony up $99 to get hitched in Massachusetts, however ($24 for the license and $75 for the Justice of the Peace). Are we $99 happier now? We were pretty happy before, but there is a certain joy in knowing that my partner’s employer will now cover my medical insurance, and we’ll get the various other benefits of marriage in the Commonwealth, so in that sense, yes. I’ll stand by what I said to Queercents, though, which is that happiness isn’t inherent in the things and events we buy. We have to create the happiness from them.
I should also point out a study from the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, which found that if every state legalized same-sex marriage, it would generate $2 billion for the wedding industry alone. “More than $74 million would be spent in Massachusetts if half the domestic partners there marry,” they claim. “In New York, it would be more than $175 million.”
Sounds like the legalization of same-sex marriage would make a lot of people a whole lot happier, one way or another.