July 20 (Bloomberg) -- Push aside that laptop. Put down that spreadsheet. Start planning a longer summer vacation. All that extra money you try to earn won't bring happiness.

The trouble is, not much else will either.

In the past few years, economists -- perhaps keen to shed the word ``dismal'' that attaches itself to their science -- have been studying the state of contentment. Their conclusion: Money can't buy you happiness, and it doesn't even cheer you up much either.

In a recent paper, Andrew Clark, professor at the PSE Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, argued that unhappiness is a much more widespread condition than was previously thought. It isn't just the pursuit of material wealth that isn't making us happy. Just about everything seems to make us miserable.

Yet maybe that isn't as downbeat a conclusion as it may appear. What the economists have discovered, in a roundabout way, is that the journey satisfies us, not the destination.

Economists have been paying more attention to happiness for a good reason. They have noticed that the world keeps getting richer. Yet, it doesn't appear to be getting much happier.

For a science that is dedicated to increasing wealth, that must come as a disappointment. It is rather like the medical profession suddenly discovering we'd rather not be healthy.

Richard Layard, professor of economics at the London School of Economics, has been one of the most forceful advocates of the study of happiness. ``GDP is a hopeless measure of welfare,'' he said in a lecture at the school in 2003. ``For since the War, that measure has shot up by leaps and bounds, while the happiness of the population has stagnated.''

Higher Taxes

There is no disputing the figures. Output in most industrialized countries continues to rise, unlike the sum of human contentment. Economists such as Layard suggest that society needs higher taxes. The aim wouldn't be to redistribute wealth or to alleviate poverty, but to help us get off the treadmill of trying to earn more money.

Yet, according to Clark, that might not work either.

His theory shows that as soon as we get something, we don't really value it anymore.

The logic runs like this. Money doesn't buy you happiness because as the world gets richer, you aren't the only one who is better off. Everyone else in your street is, too. So although we might be twice as rich as our parents were, our relative position hasn't really changed.

Result: We aren't any happier.

Relative Wealth

The reason is that the happiness that money is supposed to buy depends on our being richer than everyone else. And, fairly obviously, only very few of us (mainly the people who run hedge funds) get to be in that position.

``As our permanent quest for higher income and more possessions is doomed to failure, the argument continues, we should become less materialistic and do something else instead,'' Clark says in his paper, ``Happiness, Habits and High Rank: Comparisons in Economic and Social Life,'' presented at a conference of the U.K.'s Institute for Social and Economic Research.

``Some have suggested social activities, religion or more time with the family. But can we be sure that these don't suffer from the same drawbacks as income? Do we adapt to family life? Are there social comparisons in religion?''

Clark is certainly on to something. ``The point I wanted to make here is that the `money doesn't matter, so we should do something else instead' argument only works if the something else doesn't suffer from the same drawbacks that money and possessions do,'' Clark said in an e-mailed response to questions.

A Good Marriage

He has studied the main things that are supposed to make us happy, and his conclusions aren't encouraging.

You might imagine, for example, that a good marriage would make for a happier life. Yet there is no statistical evidence for that, Clark says. The honeymoon effect is short-lived. People bounce back quickly from divorce.

How about work we enjoy then? Afraid not. In areas of high unemployment, people get by. So long as we are all out of work, it shouldn't make us less happy. Likewise, in areas where we all have a good job, that won't make us happy, either.

Well, religion maybe. Surely that is some comfort. Not really. While there is some evidence that religious people are happier, they need to be members of the dominant religious group in their area. Once again, social comparisons with what everyone else is doing are what counts, not the activity itself.

Questions of Status

At this point, you might be tempted to shrug and say that people are so difficult that nothing makes them happy. ``Instead of saying that there are lots of other things that matter, the challenge now would be to rank these other things in terms of how much we adapt to them, and how much status matters for them,'' Clark said.

That's true. Although nothing itself makes us happy, we can at least start mapping out the things that make us more or less content.

Yet what the economists studying happiness seem to be stumbling toward is a simpler truth.

Money won't ultimately make us happy because once everyone has it, it isn't worth so much.

Neither will anything else, for the same reason.

People, it turns out, are ferociously competitive. It really is a jungle out there.

What makes us happy is doing better than the guy at the next desk, scoring a better-looking wife/richer husband than the next person, or having a bigger car than the family across the street.

We are only really happy when we are getting something that is better than what everyone else has.

And indeed, so long as it keeps delivering insights like that, economics can keep its tag as the ``dismal science.''

To contact the writer of this column: Matthew Lynn in London at matthewlynn@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 19, 2005 19:14 EDT