This just in: money apparently does buy happiness.
A new study conducted by a senior fellow at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania found an increasingly positive association between money and happiness.
Matt Killingsworth, who tracks happiness for his large-scale research project, trackyourhappiness.org, sampled 33,269 employed US adults aged 18-65 with household incomes of at least $10,000 each year, who answered questions on a scale called “satisfaction with life”.
Killingsworth also used data from the ultra-wealthy (people with a median net worth between $3m and $7.9m), which is often lacking and difficult to obtain.
“Perhaps rich people are disinclined to spend their free time taking surveys,” said the study, Money and Happiness: Extended Evidence Against Satiation, which is self-published and not peer-reviewed.
The data showed the happiness gap between wealthy and middle-income participants was wider than between middle- and low-income participants.
In a 2024 Pew Research report titled The State of the American Middle Class, middle-income Americans are defined as those “living in households with an annual income that is two-thirds to double the national median household income”, which is around $74,580, according to the US census.
“The difference in life satisfaction between the wealthy and those with incomes of $70-80,000 [per year] was nearly three times as large as the difference between $70-80,000 [per year] and the average of the two lowest income groups,” Killingsworth’s study said.
His study also found wealthy individuals were “substantially and statistically significantly happier than people earning over $500,000 each year”.
Killingsworth told the Guardian he was surprised by how big the overall difference in happiness is between people who are wealthy and those who are low income.
“Money is just one of many things that matters for happiness, and a small difference in income tends to be associated with pretty small differences in happiness,” Killingsworth said. “But if the differences in income/wealth are very large, the differences in happiness can be, too.”
These findings are counter to a widely covered 2010 study that found happiness rises with income, but plateaus at around $75,000.
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So why might rich people be happier? The answer may seem obvious, but Killingsworth said it’s “more fundamental and psychologically deeper than simply buying more stuff”.
He said: “A greater feeling of control over life can explain about 75% of the association between money and happiness. So I think a big part of what’s happening is that, when people have more money, they have more control over their lives. More freedom to live the life they want to live.”
Killingsworth said his interest in studying happiness stems from wanting to understand how to make life better.
“Ironically, part of the reason I’m so interested in happiness is because money alone – which we’re already pretty motivated to pursue – is just one small part of the overall equation for happiness. So part of the reason I study happiness is to broaden our horizons beyond things like money.”
He added: “What would we do differently if we took happiness seriously? As individuals, families, organizations and societies? It’s a long-term question, and not one that we will instantly have perfect answers to.”
