“The Economics of Happiness” by Richard A. Easterlin, in Daedalus (Spring 2004), Norton’s Woods, 136 Irving St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138.

Most Americans cherish family and health, but few will turn down a higher-paying job even if it cuts into their time at home or in the gym. The extra money, most people believe, will buy additional happiness. Presented in one opinion poll with a hypothetical job that would give them higher pay but less free time than their current job, none of the 1,200 respondents said that it was “very unlikely” they would take the job.

Americans hold no monopoly on materialism, notes Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California. In the early 1960s, social psychologist Hadley Cantrill conducted a poll that asked people in 14 countries what would make them happy. The number one answer everywhere: more.

When asked how much money it would take to make them completely happy, Amer­icans typically name an income about 20 percent higher than their current one, reports Easterlin. It’s true that people with higher incomes report higher levels of happiness, on average. The problem is that increasing their wealth doesn’t make them any happier. That’s because we tend to compare our material situation with our peers, the proverbial Joneses. A study that began tracking a group of Americans who were in their twenties in 1972 found that their incomes had more than doubled by 2000. But the measure of happiness they reported changed not at all.

All of this confounds the predictions of Easterlin’s fellow economists. Yet psychologists don’t have a better grip on the sources of happiness. In psychology, the vogue is for a “setpoint” theory, which holds that each individual has a fixed level of happiness, determined by genetics and personality. Events such as marriage or divorce make only a temporary difference on the individual’s happiness meter. Before long, the old self, happy or sad, reappears.

Some studies lend support to this idea, according to Easterlin, but a lot of others (and common sense) contradict it. Marriage, for example, really does make most people happier over the long term.

Easterlin’s advice: If you’re offered that higher-paying job, ignore the economists and psychologists and strongly question your own “commonsense” impulse to go for the money.