The price of happiness

SIR – The question is not whether money can buy happiness but how much money it takes (“Subtract rows, add sex”, July 27th). Paul Samuelson, in his famous economics textbook, presents an equation: happiness equals consumption divided by desire. At first glance crassly materialistic, this equation can also describe Buddha-like levels of serenity. Reduce your desire to zero and happiness becomes infinite.

Similarly, I derive great happiness from the assertion that it would take 170,000 ($260,000) a year to offset the loss of well-being my wife might suffer should I leave her a widow. In net-present-value terms this amounts to about 3m. Since my various life-insurance policies and other assets are worth only a small fraction of this sum, I go to bed easily, knowing that she has no incentive to murder me in my sleep.

Charles Krakoff
Amman, Jordan

SIR – If marriage yields 60,000 of happiness a year and widowhood deducts 170,000, then it is indeed far worse to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Ross Frisbie
Philadelphia