Graham considers happiness from a scientific point of view. She uses research conducted by herself, economists and psychologists. Most of the research is surveys. Which proves to be a problem. In many instances happiness can be connected to factors such as health but causation cannot be determined. The correlation between good health and happiness is pretty strong but people happy because they are healthy or the other way around? Across countries, people who make more (relative to others in their country) are generally happier.
So, what about those happy peasants and miserable millionaires? The biggest takeaway from the book is probably that people tend to adapt to their circumstances. The happy peasants adapt to their bad circumstances and appreciate what they do have. The miserable millionaires are probably comparing themselves to people who are even richer and want to have more.
There were some good findings in this book but reading about study after study and what the findings mean became dull. A topic that would seem to be interesting had some of the life taken out of it.
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