Calay News
The findings go against a well-known 2010 study by economist Angus Deaton and psychologist Daniel Kahneman, which claimed that pleasure increases with money until it “flattens” out between $60,000 and $90,000 per year.
In a new analysis of Kahneman’s work, Killingsworth, a former software product manager and PhD student in psychology at Harvard University, showed that there was no happiness plateau at all in a similar study conducted in 2021.
Their most recent study, which they refer to as an “adversarial partnership,” did discover a plateau, but only for the unhappiest 20% of people and only when they begin earning more than $100,000. But as their income rose to six figures, even those in this dissatisfied group began to feel happier. The happiness benefit of additional money only stops functioning at this stage, and “the sorrows that remain are not relieved by high wealth.”
For extremely poor people, money “definitely helps a lot,” Killingsworth told New Scientist. Yet if you have a solid income but are nonetheless dissatisfied, the issue is usually not one that can be fixed with money.
Money, at least in part, correlates, for all other Americans outside of this group, with happiness. Furthermore, once wages surpass $100,000, the rate at which happiness rises even accelerates among the 30% of those who are the happiest.
Nonetheless, the researchers discovered that, when compared to other situations, even something as straightforward as two days off at the end of a week, the overall emotional impact of having more money on a person is minimal.
The effect of a weekend is “almost equivalent to an income disparity that is four times larger,” it stated.
The respondents were employed adults in the US between the ages of 18 and 65 who had a median age of 33 and an annual household income of $85,000. Using an app created by Killingsworth, the participants were polled on a daily basis regarding their level of happiness.
Although respondents with salaries over $500,000 were included in the study, the researchers stated that it was impossible to say with certainty whether the effect was there for those with incomes above this level.
“The tendency rises consistently through the top income category [$500,000] in my data, but how far it extends is an unanswered question,” he wrote in an email to Bloomberg News. I’m working on a solution, but it’s not quite finished yet.
