"I like money and nice things, but it's not money that makes me happy. It's people," says one woman in a World Bank survey. She's not alone: research has found that social integration is more important for well-being than income, and also decreases poverty. Loneliness, conversely, can be deadly: one study found it did more damage to health than smoking. This week, policymakers from 40 countries met in Colombia to ponder ways to measure deprivation that take account of more than just income, including isolation. Several Latin American countries are devising or have already adopted such "multi-dimensional" measures of poverty.
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