It’s Better To Earn It
From WSJ’s Wealth Report:
PNC Wealth Management recently polled about 1,500 Americans with $500,000 or more in investible assets and found that 69% of respondents made most of their fortune through work, business ownership or investments. Only 6% made their wealth by inheriting it, while 25% made it through a combination of inheritence and earnings.
What’s most interesting is that the survey found some major differences in the two groups’ attitudes about money — and their responses didn’t always break down along predictable lines:
[...]
LUCK — Fully 37% of earners agreed that “the money I have made so far has come from being at the right place at the right time.” Among heirs, the number was 25%. I guess the heirs don’t subscribe to Warren Buffett’s “lucky sperm” theory.
HAPPINESS– Fuly 76% of earners agree that “my financial success lets me feel less stress and worry,” compared to 50% of heirs. Half of all earners agree that “as I have accumulated more money in my life I have become happier,” compared to a third of heirs.
I especially like the luck result. It’s hard work getting born to the right parents.
[HT: Free Exchange]
April 19th, 2008 10:58
> I especially like the luck result. It’s hard work getting born to the right parents.
The chances that any single human would be born are essentially zero. The right sperm and the right egg not only from your parents, but also their respective parents and their respective parents etc. etc. all the way back to whenever…
April 19th, 2008 11:41
If the report is accurate, the statement was not “the money I HAVE has come from being in the right place at the right time”, it was “the money I have MADE”. I would submit that even the most spoiled trust-fund kid would be able to distinguish between his inheritance and money he has earned through labor of some sort. I would also submit that the prevalence of poorly-worded questions such as this make putting any stock in surveys a fool’s errand….
April 19th, 2008 19:48
I agree with markfarner that there’s some poor wording. More interesting results might have been yielded, perhaps, with a statement such as, “I deserve the money I have.”
April 20th, 2008 21:58
What’s worse, the phrasing of the luck question seems to very poorly match inherited wealth. I can imagine someone admitting “yeah, I was lucky” but without finding the phrase “was in the right place at the right time” to be too apt (as the lucky sperm reference makes clear).
As for the latter questions–what weight should we really put in people’s claims about the causes of their happiness? Seems like exactly the sort of question where one doesn’t trust auto-theorizing, and should instead go for indirect evidence.