Remember that happiness increases when you make others happy!
As can be seen in Table 1, happiness increased from before to after the happy mood induction, t(45) = 7.03, p <.001, but decreased from before to after the sad mood induction, t(45) = 6.80, p <.001.
Specifically, Polgreen and Simpson (2011) used the World Values Survey to discover a U-shaped relationship between emigration rates and happiness: emigration decreases as happiness increases in relatively unhappy countries, but rises as happiness increases in relatively happy countries.
So happiness increases helping, and likewise helping increases happiness, creating a positive feedback loop of warm fuzzy feelings (and their associated neurochemicals) in oneself and in others.
He recalled a 2010 report from Princeton that concluded that as people earn more their day-to-day happiness increases until they hit $75,000 a year, after which there is no gain.
His prediction for the rest of the century: "Prosperity spreads, technology progresses, poverty declines, disease retreats, fecundity falls, happiness increases, violence atrophies, freedom grows, knowledge flourishes, the environment improves and wilderness expands".
Philip Hodson, of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, reckons this is part of a natural process: as people get richer, their sense of entitlement to happiness increases and their threshold for worry often becomes lower.
