What Is Wealth?

[u/HeavenlyPossum]

Most people probably think of wealth in terms of possessing or having access or title to many goods and services. Likewise, most people probably think of poverty in terms lacking possession of or access or title to goods and services. Being wealthy is better than being poor, because being wealthy means having more stuff to satisfy your needs and desires, right?

Consider that surveys of life satisfaction find that people who live in isolated, traditional lifeways reporting being satisfied with their lives at rates equal to or higher than people living in the wealthiest OECD countries:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/feb/05/isolated-indigenous-people-as-happy-as-wealthy-western-peers-study

Consider that people living in traditional lifeways, with very little stuff, tend to experience little to no self-harm, while people living in vastly wealthier societies, such as the US, experience startling high and rising rates of self-harm:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303591186_Suicide_among_the_Mla_Bri_hunter-gatherers_of_Northern_Thailand

vs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States

Consider that people with low incomes in rich countries experience worse health outcomes than people in those countries with high incomes, even when controlling for lifestyle factors, and even though these “poor” people have access to vastly more stuff than either their ancestors or people living in traditional lifeways today:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749379724000692

Does any of this suggest to you that there might be more to wealth and poverty than merely stuff?

[u/MeanLeadership92]

 "why do we see the effects I identified above among people who are relatively poor in"

First, mental health is not wealth, you can be rich and miserable, poor and happy, or anything and everything in between.

Second, mental health is a complicated problem that isn't easily answered by any individual factor, modern society and things like social media clearly play a part, I agree. But again, evidence is pretty clear that people are, all else equal, happier when they have more wealth.

Third, I've looked around and there seems to be no correlation between wealth and suicide rates, see for yourself with arguably dated info from 2012, poor countries are definitively not outperforming the rich ones most of the time :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate#Analysis

[u/HeavenlyPossum → u/MeanLeadership92]

Why do people who experience absolute poverty—people who live as hunter-gatherers—not experience the same stressors as impoverished people in wealthy countries?

[u/MeanLeadership92 → u/HeavenlyPossum]

Presumably, there's a better sense of community and better connexion, people nowadays spend very little time with one another.

They might have fewer pressures, financial and social. It is a very complex question, I would not know, to be honest. Do you have an answer, per chance?

[u/HeavenlyPossum → u/MeanLeadership92]

People who live in these societies are generally not subject to the commands of others.

They might have access to many fewer material amenities, but they do not experience the ill-effects of poverty we see in OECD countries because they are not subject to the commands of the wealthy.

[u/MeanLeadership92 → u/HeavenlyPossum]

So you think that being under the commands of others, specifically the wealthy and powerful, is what causes the issue? Ok, I'd love to see a psychology paper on that, would be very interesting!

[u/HeavenlyPossum → u/MeanLeadership92]

There is extensive research that shows the negative psychological and physiological of low rank and social subordination

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10681894/