Giving to others: How to convert your money into greater happiness for others

Michael Plant, Joel McGuire, Samuel Dupret, Ryan Dwyer, and Ben Stewart

Abstract

We hope that if you’re reading this, you’re not just interested in world happiness, you want to do something about it. But, what can you do? This chapter focuses on something many of us already do and nearly all of us can do: give to charity. Each year, over a billion people donate more than $500 billion to charity, driven in large part by a desire to help others.

However, there are many worthy problems in the world, our resources are limited, and we don’t want to waste our money. So, how can you get real change for your dollar? More specifically, how can you make the biggest difference to world happiness with what you have to spare?

People say “money can’t buy happiness”. At the Happier Lives Institute, we reject that claim but with a twist. We show that money can buy happiness for other people and we highlight the ‘best buys’ that have been identified so far. To do this, we compare the impact of charities using wellbeing-years (WELLBYs) per dollar, a method we will explain in due course.

The World Happiness Report is published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, in partnership with Gallup, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and an independent editorial board.

Any views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of any organisation, agency, or program of the United Nations.