Wealth is No Guarantee of a Good Quality of Life, Am I Correct?
The quality of life refers to individual’s satisfaction level in different aspects of life. Except wealth, it involves different aspects at both personal and social levels, such as health, social welfare and level of cohesion. Wealth, as one of the satisfactions in life, is too little to guarantee us a good quality of life.
Before we evaluate whether wealth is guarantee of a good quality of life or not, we must first define what a good quality of life means. Quality of life can be divided into material life and non-material life. For material quality of life, it generally refers to the satisfaction that can be exchanged with money. Non-material quality of life, in the contrary, refers to the satisfaction of the soul that cannot be exchanged with money. Now, it is obvious that wealth can only guarantee us a material quality of life, but not a non-material quality of life.
As I have mentioned above, a good quality of life is guaranteed at both personal and social levels. Now, let me talk about personal levels first. For a person regarded to be enjoying a good quality of life, he or she should have achieved a certain degree of human development. This includes the possession of a healthy and long life, acquisition of knowledge, and the possession of necessary resources for a decent standard of living. Among the three major necessary options for a good quality of life, only the last option can be guaranteed by wealth. As all of us know, a healthy and long life cannot be satisfied by wealth. Even for the rich, they may have a short life, since longevity cannot be exchanged with wealth. In respect to the acquisition of knowledge, we need to gain knowledge by our hard work. Our knowledge cannot be exchanged with wealth. Yet, some people may argue that we cannot get a place to study in the university without money. However, with a sound welfare system, everyone will have the chance to gain knowledge, which again cannot be exchanged with wealth.
Other than the degree of human development, the happiness level of people also reflects the quality of life. From the result of the “World Values Survey”, wealth is not necessarily in direct proportion to the quality of life. Take Hong Kong as an example, even though it’s per capita GDP ranked 11th in the world, it’s happiness index ranked 63th, the lowest among the East Asian countries. In the contrary, Bhutan, a poor country with per capital GDP of only a few hundred US dollars, ranked 8th in the world’s happiness index. This shows that the rich do not necessarily have a happy life. And those who are poor can also have a happy life. Therefore, wealth is no guarantee of a good quality of life.
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