Wealth and wellbeing - Heraclitus' balance - Epicurus' eudaemonia?

The statistics office in the UK has just produced the figures for life satisfaction for 2012 ( http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171766_398059.pdf ).

The Financial Times (FT) has interpreted this as showing that the richer you are, the happier you are. Well, they would, wouldn't they.

The good news for those who do not think wealth for the sake of it is a good thing, is that it isn't quite that simple. There is still room for what Epicurus called 'eudaemonic' (human flourishing) and for Heraclitus view that life is about balance and flow, not extremes.

Here are the graphs:

What about decile 7? -- from ONS

You can see the one that the FT has latched on to. The top left shows 'Life satisfaction' against wealth, and shows it is lowest for the poorest, and highest for the richest.. Not quite, though, notice the bump at D7, which is more satisfied than D8, even if not as smug as D9 and D10.
Reported smugness isn't everything there is to happiness, though.

At the bottom left, self-reported happiness shows another bump for D7. The three happiest deciles are D3, D7 and D10. For some reason, D8 and D9 are over twice as unhappy as D7.

A sense of worth is very important to eudaemonia - and, there you see, again, at the top right, D7 is the anomaly, happier than both D8 and D10, and about as happy as D9.

Finally, what's the point of having lots of money and being anxious? The most anxious people are the D3s, which offsets their reported happiness. Yes, the very richest, the D10s, are less anxious than most.... But, the least anxious of all, almost half as anxious as the D10s, are the D7s.
On every measure, there seems to be something special, something closer to eudaemonia, than all the other deciles.

Who are this happy few? Well, the centre of the income group is a gross income of £41,123, or, more sensibly, an income between £37,700 and £45,575. That was in 2012, when the average gross income was £39,200. In percentage terms, this adds up to +/-16.3% of the average gross income.
In terms of disposable income, this is +/-12.9% of the average disposable income, that was £29,447, or, in the range between £28,482 and £33,280.

This looks much more reasonable than the FT's notion that the richer you are, the better.

To have the best balance of satisfaction, happiness, and a sense of worth, with the least anxiety, you need to be round about the average income, about 10% of it.

As Goldilocks would have said, not too much, and not too little, just right.