Money = Happy?

The question of whether money makes people happy has probably been on mankind's mind for as long as this means of payment has existed. Our infographic tries to get closer to an answer. The underlying figures are, on the one side, the points achieved by the countries in the World Happiness Index (X-axis of the chart) and on the other, their respective gross domestic product per capita (Y-axis).

As indicated by the distribution of countries based on the green dots and the corresponding red trend line, there is a correlation between the variables: The higher a country's GDP per capita, the more points it tends to score on the World Happiness Index.

The correlation comes to a value of 0.69 - representing a strong association. There are however deviations and outliers. For example, Hong Kong's (HK) GDP per capita of $49,700 is relatively high, but its Happiness Index score of 5.31 is relatively low - many countries with similar Happiness Index scores have GDP per capita below $10,000.