When do you have enough?

Some countries have been decreasing the amount of people living in extreme poverty, but the gap between the rich and the poor is still growing. Inequality is growing for more than 70 percent of the global population. And it has been already on the rise for several decades. How big is this difference and does having a lot of money even make you happy?

The richest 1% own 44% of the world’s wealth, meanwhile 56,6% of the world’s population hold less than 2 percent of the world’s wealth. In the picture below you can see how big the differences are. It shows that only 11% of the global population own 82,8 of the world's wealth.

I find the differences in wealth quite shocking. I never knew it was this big. I was looking into global inequality I came up with a lot of questions. Such as “Does having a huge amount of money even make you happy?” and “When are you poor?”. So I did some more research. I found this study from Andrew T. Jebb (1) where he looks at income and happiness. He says “Globally, we find that satiation occurs at $95,000 for life evaluation and $60,000 to $75,000 for emotional well-being. However, there is substantial variation across world regions, with satiation occurring later in wealthier regions. We also find that in certain parts of the world, incomes beyond satiation are associated with lower life evaluations.” So why are there people out there who have this huge amounts of money?

Another story I came across when I was doing some research is of “The poorest president of the world”. This is José Mujica and he has been the president of Uruguay from 2010 till 2015. He didn't want to live in the presidential house, but chose to live on a small farm with his wife, animals and dog. He also donated 90% of his $12.000 per month salary to benefit the poor and help small entrepreneurs. Even though he is known as the poorest president, he strongly disagrees. He says, “I’m not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live”. I think money doesn't make you happy but you will need several amounts to cover basic needs. Most people in western countries are really materialistic and I know I take part in that as well. I also want to have an Apple phone and smart watch. And I buy occasionally new clothes. But I think there are a lot of people who always want more and more and more. Like even when they got them self some new things they start talk about some other things they also want to have. So according to lexico.com the definition of poor is “Lacking sufficient money to live at a standard considered comfortable or normal in a society”. But don't you really live 'poor' when you always have the feeling that it is never enough?

References

(1) https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/#global-wealth-inequality

(2) https://qz.com/1211957/how-much-money-do-people-need-to-be-happy/

(3) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45195188