A Nobel Prize-winning economist and his colleagues concluded in a recent study that having money does seem to make people happier. These results go counter to earlier theories that happiness levels out around $75,000 per year. According to this recent study, the ‘top out’ happiness figure is closer to $500 000 per year. Retrospective data has been used in previous studies on the relationship between happiness and money, which leaves the possibility for human memory errors.
The real-time, documented data from a mood-tracking app used in this current study, in contrast, enables a more precise picture of respondents’ experienced well-being. They later compared these emotions and discovered that persons making up to $500,000 a year were, on the whole, extremely happy, according to CBS.
It is just one of the many factors that determine happiness, Killingsworth said in a statement. Although it cannot guarantee happiness, money can undoubtedly make life a little easier.
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Why Does Money Make People Happy?
The study issues a warning that all ideas explaining why happiness rises with affluence are merely conjectural. It does, though, include the following options:
Enhanced comfort
A person may be able to buy items that lessen suffering when their income increases. Larger incomes below $80,000/year nevertheless demonstrated a robust correlation with reduced negative moods, which is particularly evident when comparing low to moderate-income groups.
More command over self-control
Control and respondents’ feelings of happiness appear to be related. 74% of the correlation between money and well-being was explained by a sense of control.
Regarding money: it matters
Not every respondent was concerned with it. But for those who did, it significantly affected how well-off they felt. In general, those with lower incomes were happy if they did not value money, whereas those with higher incomes were happier if they believed that money was important.
