Timothy Leary would have been disappointed. The luckiest people in the USA are married, god-abiding republicans, that earn more money than their neighbours. I guess, he would have thought the happiest people are those that have a lot of sex and are more societal. Usually, happiness is being measured in relation to other people. The average income in the USA and western Europe  has been rising constantly in the last years, yet the portion of people who think of themselves as happy has remained constant. Perhaps because the comparative level has been rising just the same. The main criteria therefore is not absolute wealth, but comparative wealth (supposing you earn enough to fulfill your basic needs.) In Austria a basic income of, lets say, 30.000 Euros provides a sufficient lifestyle for a basic family situation. That means, if you earn 40K you are happier in a company that pays 30K on average than in a company that pays 50K. The extra 10.000 Euro won't buy you anything that will have a lasting effect on your level of happiness, the same way that the feeling of earning more than your colleagues has.

A scientist once said: "The key to happiness is low expectations." When buying something more expensive you should make yourself clear that in the end you won't be comparing your purchase to the other goods in the store but to what you are already owning - or what your friends are owning. People are usually less satisfied with their purchases if they had to decide between a large selection in a store and more satisfied if there were only a few options available. If we have to make many comparisons before purchasing we are probably less happy afterwards because we know about all those things we had to leave out. That is one of the reasons why the more expensive a store is, especially fashion, shows and luxury goods, the less products are available in the store.

In Germany and other industrial states, happiness is not so much an effect of demographic factors, but in comparing different levels of happiness over various countries, they play an important role.In the nations of the former Soviet Union and in Africa the highest number of unhappy people live. Maybe because of poverty, bad health care and wars. The London Economist Intelligence Unit institute has found out that the level of happiness is determined by 82 % by nine factors which are: health (live expectancy), wealth (gross domestic product per capita), political stability, divorce rate, rate of integration of society, climate (the warmer the better), unemployment rate, political liberties and equality of the sexes (the closer income of men and women are the happier the people are). Cultural factors are also important but are less clear to grab. For instance people from Denmark are more happy than people in Finland, but why?

Even big events in live are not so important for happiness as one might assume. Blind people for instance are not less happy than others. Married people on the other hand are usually more happy with their lives than unmarried, but having children does not add to the level of happiness. People seem to tend to return to their "usual level" of happiness after experiencing an up or down event. This phenomenon of getting used to events is one of the main reasons why we keep on buying things we actually don't need. If it makes you happy to own something new, then you will have to renew the feeling over and over again because the feeling doesn't last. Taking this idea to the extreme we consequently could judge that trying to make people happy on a sustainable level is futile from the beginning and that life circumstances don't have an effect anyway. Which would be rather suprising result and most arguably wrong. In fact, a lot of suituations, like sickness or long ways of commuting, are definitely linked to feeling unhappy.

Events that have a long term negative effect on happiness are death of a partner, divorce, unemployment and the inability to work. In these cases also people tend to re-level their happiness in long terms of getting used to the new situation, but the return is never as complete. Eight years after the death of their partner the remaining person is still less happy than before. Measures to raise the level of happiness on the other hand are also possible, but have to be repeated again and again to be sustainable. In long term surveys psychologists usually find relatively stable levels of happiness with people. In a 17-year study in Germany the happiness level of people only changed in 24 % of all surveyed cases and only in 9 % drastically. Individual circumstances, like marriage, health, income and so on, only make for 20 % of the variation in level of happiness in the USA, scientists found out, whereas 50 % were attributed to genetic factors. (the remaining % are deemed measurement inexactnesses...) Twins that are seperated at birth show remarkably similar levels of happiness.

Neuroscientists find the reasons for happiness in the structure building processes of the brain. Also nerve cells tend to get used to circumstances, although in brain cells it is a matter of seconds, not months. This effect is so powerful because the biggest part of the information being processed by the brain as it is being percieved remains the same in time, though the relevant parts are of course those that change: moving objects, an unknown facial expression of the partner or a new source of food. Neurons in various regions of the brain react to events that are "rewarding" (the term rewarding in neuroscience stands for anything that makes you repeat what you have done before, like eating, drinking, sex and a lot of complicated things like being in society of good friends.) Rewards are connected to a subjective feeling of positivity and people are ready to make efforts for rewards. There are two kinds of rewards: one that loses attraction, like food. Once you are stuffed, more food is not a reward anymore. The second kind are those that never lose attraction, like sex, money or spending time with your loved ones. The main transmitter of these feelings of happiness is Dopamin. Scientiests believe that Dopamin helps people to select efforts that lead to rewards, which then are repeated over and over again and lead to learning behaviour that finally leads to a certain level of happiness.

After all those explanations one thing is clear. Happiness is a very subjective thing. Maybe it is true what on unknown artist said: "Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get." Therefore, have fun with what you got and be happy.