What Money Can Buy
Money won’t buy happiness, but if you’re a man, money will probably play a role in how successful you are with women, as the psychologist David M. Buss makes plain in The Evolution of Desire. In one experiment, women were shown photographs of the same men, sometimes dressed in fast-food uniforms and at other times in classy business attire. When the men wore clothes that screamed “money,” they were rated as more attractive. Women’s incomes seem to matter less to men, who are much more concerned with a mate’s looks.
In general, more income and education mean a longer life. So does increased social status, which is also associated with money. In the so-called Whitehall studies of British civil servants, for example, researchers have found that an individual’s occupational grade was strongly correlated to longevity: the higher the grade, the longer the life.
Money can help with everything except your natural disposition but even the crankiest among us will consider ourselves better off with a more desirable spouse, better schools for our children, higher status and surer access to health care. There is also evidence that happiness comes as much from giving as receiving, and dollars can help here — earning more means that you can give more.