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Does wealth make you happy? It’s an old question, but always relevant. Before
1945 no one had TV, computers or mobile phones. Are we happier now that we have
them? Edited by Ed Diener and Eunkook Suh, Culture and Subjective Well-Being
(MIT Press, $45, ISBN 0262041820) has some fascinating answers to this
and similarly piercing questions. For example, while the perceived inequality of
incomes is an important factor, if you are poor you may feel worse about it if
you are in a rich country than in a poor one. Curiously, the poorest of some
societies with huge rich-poor divides, such as Brazil, are happier than the
poorest people in the Netherlands.