The more money you make, the happier you are (according to science)

Whether we like it or not, money plays an important role in the physical and mental well-being of people. Now, the exact relationship between money and happiness is less clear. For this reason, a team of researchers from Purdue University in Indiana (USA) set out to delve into its nature, the link and influence of our capital on the well-being of our day-to-day life as human beings who are members of a society .

The researchers used the Gallup World Poll, with data from 1.7 million reports from 33,391 working-age adults. Examining this vast volume of data, the experts looked at people’s emotional well-being, everyday feelings, and life evaluation, which is essentially how satisfied they are with their lives.

Unlike the study carried out in 2018 that was published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour , which concluded that money made us happier to a certain extent, because once you reach a salary of around 60-75,000 dollars (in the United States States), happiness tended to plateau and earning more did not improve emotional well-being; That study required a good deal of memory, as participants were asked to recall how happy they had felt recently.

“This requires people to accurately recall how they felt at various moments in the past and then accurately integrate those memories into a single estimate, an approach that is vulnerable to recall errors and bias in judgment ,” the authors of the study wrote. new studio.

In the new work, they were able to obtain data that eliminated the potential bias associated with memory from the earlier research . To do this, they asked questions such as “how are you feeling right now?”, with answers ranging from “very bad” to “very good”.

What thresholds are there in this relationship between money and happiness?

It has long been believed that wealth improves people’s lives up to a certain point, but then stops making a difference.

The results revealed that well-being increased linearly with household income, with no limit to this effect . Experienced well-being increased linearly with logarithmic income, with an equally steep slope above $80,000 (about €73,600) as below this amount.

The study was quantitative, but experts have proposed a number of explanations for why this relationship between income and well-being and life satisfaction exists.

“This suggests that higher incomes may still have potential to improve people’s daily well-being, rather than having reached a plateau for many people in rich countries,” say the authors, who publish their study in the journal Proceedings . of the National Academy of Sciences.

“While there may be some point beyond which money loses its power to improve well-being, the current results suggest that point may be higher than previously thought .”

While the reason for the link remains unclear, the researchers suggest that higher incomes give people a greater sense of control over their lives, which, in turn, can make them happier.

Referencia: Matthew A. Killingsworth et al. Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year January 18, 2021 | 118 (4) e2016976118 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2016976118

Referencia: Andrew T. Jebb, A.T., Tay, L., Diener, E. et al. Happiness, income satiation and turning points around the world. Nature Human Behaviour 2, 33–38 (2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0277-0