give it away!

The debate about whether money can really make you happy has raged for centuries - probably since money first changed hands. But is there a definitive answer?

Well, an answer may be a little closer, after a study published in the journal Science, suggestsed that actually, the amount of cash we have to play with is immaterial - it's what we do with it that counts...and splashing out on others can make us happier.

Researchers asked a group of college students how happy they were. They then gave the participants money - either $5 or $20. Half were told to spend the money on themselves. The others were told to spend it on others, perhaps giving a gift to a friend or making a charitable donation. That evening, the researchers again asked the students to gauge their happiness.

The students participants who spent money on others said that they were happier afterwards than the people who spent the money on themselves. And the amount of money that they were given to spend made no difference to how happy they felt at all. idn't seem to matter at all.

A Little Giving Goes a Long Way

"This suggests that even making really small changes in how one spends money can make a difference for happiness," says Elizabeth Dunn, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Canada and one of the authors of the study.

In another study, the same researchers tracked the happiness levels of 16 employees who received a profit-sharing bonus. Again, the findings were the same: those who spent their bonus on others reported the greatest happiness boost.

"The size of the bonus turned out to not matter at all," says Dunn. "What mattered is how they spent the money."

So...although nothing is concrete, as in both studies the participants were rating their own happiness, never an exact science - there is a growing body of research that shows there may be some truth in the old adage: it's better to give than to receive.