Hot Toys November 2009
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An Australian scientist working on “happiness projects” has found that you can put a dollar value on the pain and happiness women and men feel. At least according to that number, males are in fact much more emotional than females as far as major life events are concerned.
In fact, Paul Frijters of the Queensland University of Technology found that men might feel up to ten times the pain women do.
According to a report published by British Telegraph, a marriage is apparently worth $29,677.10 to men, while it is worth only $14,651.19 to women, according to today’s currency conversion rates. Similarly, the birth of a child carries a value of $30,618.52 for men and only $8171.21 to women.
If we believe Frijters, then pain is even more amplified in men in terms of dollar value.
“Losing a loved one has a much bigger effect than gaining a loved one. There’s a real asymmetry between life and death,” he said. “This shouldn’t surprise us. Human beings seem primed to notice losses more than gains.”
The death of a partner has a pain value of $122,909.44 to women, but $589,036.87 for men. The relative gap has been found in divorce pain, where men put $102,613.26 on their pain and women only $8356.41.
But Frijters said that “this isn’t the value of the life that’s lost, that would be much higher of course. This is just the effect on the happiness of one person flowing from a death.”
The study results are based on a survey of about 10,000 people. I leave it up to you to argue whether that study is accurate and whether you can actually put a dollar value on your happiness and pain. According to Frijters, the conclusion of the study is that money has a greater effect on happiness than we previously thought.
