Donating money, buying happiness: new meta-analyses comparing the cost-effectiveness of cash transfers and psychotherapy in terms of subjective well-being

Abstract

In order to do as much good as possible, we need to compare how much good different things do in a single ‘currency’. At the Happier Lives Institute (HLI), we believe the best approach is to measure the effects of different interventions in terms of ‘units’ of subjective well-being (e.g. self-reports of happiness and life satisfaction). In this post, we discuss our new research comparing the cost-effectiveness of psychotherapy to cash transfers.