Comparing salary to those of family and friends ‘a recipe for unhappiness’

 

Comparing salary to those of family and friends ‘a recipe for unhappiness’

Comparing your salary to those of friends and family makes you miserable, according to economists.

Employees who compare their salaries to those of friends and family are less happy than those who do not, the study, published in the latest issue of the Economic Journal, found.

Researchers believe that those who measure their success against other colleagues are more satisfied with life, however, as it allows them to guess how their careers might progress, reports The Telegraph.

The report stated: "Those who compare to colleagues are happier than those who compare to friends or other groups."

In order to find out how common it is for workers to worry about how much they are earning in comparison with others, Andrew Clark and Claudia Senik looked at results from the European Social Survey.

Studying 19,000 responses from employees in 18 countries, including Britain, they found that only a quarter said it was "not at all important" to compare their incomes with others.

The boffins concluded: "Those who compare more are less happy. There is a negative and significant correlation between comparison intensity and subjective happiness."

Source: ANI