Millionaires have once again been found to be happier than the average population and according to a study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, it is because of how they spend their free and working hours.
Researchers were interested to see how the very wealthy spend their time and if that time use is related to well-being.
To investigate this they set up two different studies, both conducted in the Netherlands. In the first study, 863 rich and 1,232 average income participants answered questions about their life satisfaction and about what they did in their free time the previous day. They gave information on how much time they spent on activities like cooking, commuting, working, volunteering, doing hobbies, etc.
The results showed the rich spend their time in surprisingly similar ways as the general population. However, where they differed from the average Joe is the amount of time spent on active leisure, meaning that the rich were more likely to engage in activities such as volunteering, exercising or having hobbies in their schedule, as opposed to sitting on the couch watching TV.
The second study examined if wealthy people had more autonomy over how they spend their time at work and if that led to greater overall satisfaction. Results based on answers from 690 wealthy and 306 average income individuals showed that greater work autonomy, just as active leisure, is positively related to life satisfaction. They also showed that rich people are usually more independent in managing their working hours and consequently they report higher life satisfaction.
The importance of these results is in showing potential guidelines for happiness — as active leisure time was positively related to life satisfaction, and passive leisure negatively. The authors note that “these studies point to the possibility that how the wealthy spend time at work and outside of work may help to explain when wealth positively shapes well-being”.
“The greater control over time at work observed among the wealthy might also help to explain why they were able to exert more effort and energy over other aspects of their lives—such as by engaging in active leisure activities like volunteering. Wealthier individuals might be able to engage in greater active leisure because they come home from work feeling more energized and less fatigued. Future research could more specifically examine this possibility,” the researchers explain.
One of the main setbacks to the study is that it took place in the Netherlands, where the gap between the rich and non-rich is not as big as in some other countries. Taking this into consideration, as well as the fact that the Dutch government actively promotes sports and physical activity, the difference in time use between the wealthy and general population could even be larger in more unequal countries, the authors note.
The study, “Time Use and Happiness of Millionaires: Evidence From the Netherlands“, was authored by Paul Smeets, Ashley Whillans, Rene Bekkers, and Michael I. Norton.
