The phrase money can’t buy happiness isn’t true.
Everyone’s heard the saying. It’s meant as a warning against finding happiness in material positions. And somehow, it’s always the people living in a nice house who don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from who say it the most.
However, this saying is a lie. Money absolutely can buy happiness.
Reasons Money Can Buy Happiness in Life
One of the reasons money can buy happiness is simple: it affords you the ability to take care of yourself and your family. Money can buy food. Adequate money can buy a home. Money can buy peace of mind. And research shows that when you’re constantly in financial survival mode, it takes a toll on your mental health.
Poverty places such a heavy psychological burden on people that it takes up a lot of the mental bandwidth needed to perform everyday tasks.
From living in unstable housing environments to negotiating the sacrifices caused by food insecurity and inability to pay bills, the stresses of poverty take up mental energy that could be used in productive tasks such as caring for your family or advancing your career.
How Money Buys Happiness in Children
The mental effects of poverty are even worse in children. Children’s brains can be permanently affected by exposure to harmful stress hormones that alter their development and even their genes.
One study has shown that living in extreme poverty can alter 10% of the human genome. This in turn leaves a “mark” on genetic expression and leads to chronic health diseases such as chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, and cortisol dysregulation.
There is a theory called Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that suggests when children don’t have their basic needs met, they can’t learn and reach their full potential. The hierarchy is a pyramid. If children don’t have the essentials needs met at the base of the pyramid, which is consistent and nutritious food, water, and sleep, they won’t be able to reach the higher sections of the pyramid.
The higher sections of the pyramid are love and relationships, self-esteem, and self-actualization. Growing children who don’t have their basic needs met won’t be able to achieve the higher levels of a fulfilling life because they are constantly in survival mode. This can be very detrimental to their development.
This is the reason money can buy happiness for children.
There has been a push from the current administration and the far-right conservative movement encouraging people to have children whether they’re financially ready for it or not — an effort stemming from the birth rate going down and causing right-wing panic.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs supports the belief that encouraging people to have kids they can’t financially provide for only for the sake of the birth rate is reckless and irresponsible. The birth rate can keep declining if it means the children that are eventually born can live financially stable, healthy, happy lives.
Financial stability is one of the main reasons money can buy happiness. It is important for adults, and especially important for children’s growth and development. No one who is searching for happiness in financial stability is materialistic.