Money + sex = happiness?

We all know that love and sex sell. You’ve only got to take a look at the rankings of the most visited web sites in the world: sexual contacts, products with the most outlandish claims and pornography. In Spain, for example, it’s estimated that a million people buy sex-related products every day. If sex is one of the oldest businesses in the world, it’s probably because it’s coded into some part of our genes. According to biologists, even the smallest amoeba in the world has two basic needs: survival and reproduction. It’s not surprising then that we, as far more complex beings, seek to satisfy such a basic need in more sophisticated ways. Money is without doubt one of the strategies we resort to in order to fulfil this need. It’s popularly assumed that the richer the person, the more success he (or she) has with the opposite sex. However, researchers have debunked this theory. After studying more than 16,000 people, the British economist Andrew Oswald and his colleague David Blanchflower reached the conclusion that there is no correlation between money and the frequency of sexual encounters. In addition, this result is equally valid for men as well as for women. What’s more, it appears that the factors which correlate most positively with having sex more often are marital separation, in the case of men, and being on the dole, as people have more free time. So it seems that money is no guarantee of frequent sexual contacts, despite the claims to the contrary of ads for cars and jewels.

So what does happiness depend on? The Erasmus University in Rotterdam in Holland has compiled an international database about happiness called the “World Database of Happiness” which includes data on 112 countries. Curiously, the happiest people in the world are the Swiss and the Columbians, according to the findings of this database. In another ranking by the London School of Economics, the happiest people in the world are the Bangladeshis, despite the fact that over half the people in Bangladesh live beneath the poverty line. So the perception of happiness does not seem to depend on the money we have, for all the claims of marketing to make us think otherwise. Deep down, the question of happiness is encapsulated in the dilemma posed years ago by the philosopher Erich Fromm: to be or to have?  If each of us looks back over our life to the times when we have been happiest, most probably we will remember meeting up with friends, strolls, contemplating a landscape or a work of art, etc. We will think of those times when we have enjoyed being, not having. Wanting to have more and more, whether it be sexual encounters, professional success, a better car, etc., brings with it a terrible trap: the more we have, the more we are afraid to lose what we have.

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