The fact that the proverb is often very accurate and a seemingly inoffensive source of useful advice for life doesn’t mean it’s infallible. That’s why Matthew A. Killingsworth, a researcher at the Wharton School who holds a PhD in psychology from Harvard University, published a study this week that is both peculiar in form and, above all, in content. In it, Killingsworth basically states that money can buy happiness, no matter what the proverbs or the proponents of the philosophy of neutrality may say.

Moreover, the more money the better.

Academician of happiness. It may not be the most traditional subject of study, but that’s what Matt Killingsworth, a researcher at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has dedicated himself to: studying the nature and causes of human happiness. And, of course, how it relates to money. Over the years, Killingsworth has published several studies on the subject alongside other leading scientists, including the recently deceased Daniel Kahneman, but now he’s published a new paper that addresses a broader, more curious perspective.

Although the study in question (Money and Happiness: Expanded Evidence Against Satisfaction) was not peer-reviewed and was published by Killingsworth himself, but the work generated considerable interest. It even reached the pages Guardian, Bloomberg anyone money. And that’s understandable. That leaves two results that are both provocative and interesting. The first confirms that there is a “positive relationship” between the euro and happiness. The second confirms that issue The more bills there are, the sweeter it looks. Those who have money are happy. But those who have a lot of money are happier.

How do you examine something like this? Killingsworth’s work updates and complements other papers he has developed on the subject. For his complex work, he relies on surveys and previous studies that take into account respondents’ income and degree of “satisfaction” with their lives. For example, one of his sources is a sample of 33,269 Americans with a family income of at least $10,000 a year who were asked to complete a “Life Satisfaction Scale.”

His study covers an interesting segment of the population that Killingsworth himself acknowledges is not easy to access for his own research: wealthy people. He noted that he included data from people with an average net worth of $3 million to $7.9 million for his analysis. Guardian.

money problem. The clear relationship between money and happiness is nothing new. For years we have been informing you about different studies that confirm this connection, sometimes with nuances. Killingsworth drew attention to this in an article signed with more scientists in 2023, stating, among other ideas, that “among happy people, happiness increases consistently as income increases, even accelerating among the happiest group.”

Now he once again points out the “positive relationship between money and happiness”, which shows that there are clear differences between low, middle, high and very high income people when we talk about levels of life satisfaction.

A “broad and complex” topic“Are people who have more money happier? The literature on this question is vast and complex, but nearly all studies agree that having more money is associated with at least some degree of greater happiness,” Killingsworth explains in his paper.

“In recent research that included a significant number of high-income participants, I found that happiness increased steadily across the income spectrum in a large sample of the United States. From low-income earners to people earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, there is a more or less linear relationship between higher income and greater happiness.

Is there a threshold for wealth and happiness? This is the million-dollar question, Killingsworth recalls, a thorny one that the academic has already tried to answer in previous work: Assuming there is a “direct relationship” between wealth and happiness, is there a level of income? Or is wealth based on the point at which more money stops translating into more happiness? Is there a threshold, a “happiness plateau,” as it is sometimes called?

“Is it possible, for example, that people making $400,000 or $500,000 a year reach a point where more money is no longer associated with more happiness?” the author asks. This question is apt, because Killingsworth has previously largely debunked the idea that there is an income threshold above which happiness increases are fixed; in 2010, that notion was set at $75,000 a year.

Killingsworth now wanted to go further and clarify whether there were differences even within the wealthiest strata of society: Do very wealthy people show higher levels of happiness than simply wealthy people? “Despite the extensive literature on money and happiness, I am not aware of any studies comparing people who earn something like $500,000 a year with those who earn much more, which raises questions about the upper end of the economic distribution,” he admits in his recent article on the subject.

So what did you discover? So the more money the better. It’s not just a matter of someone with a good income being more satisfied with life than someone with a modest income; the point is that this difference is also seen among millionaires and people with very comfortable finances. So no: the relationship doesn’t stabilize among people with more money in the bank either. “The results suggest that the positive relationship between money and happiness persists at higher levels of the economic scale, and the magnitude of the differences can be significant.”

Not everything is a reflection. As Bloomberg recalls, the Killingsworth study also leaves clear indicators that help understand the phenomenon. The wealthiest people, those with assets in the millions or billions, gave an average score of 5.5 to 6 out of 7 when rating their life satisfaction. This score is considerably higher than the 4.6 given by those earning around $100,000 a year. It is much higher than the four and a half people earning between $15,000 and $30,000 a year.

Going into detailThese “notes” not only show significant differences in happiness between the wealthiest and most modest groups, but also make for an even more revealing read: the happiness gap between the wealthiest groups and those with average earnings appears to be widening. “The difference in life satisfaction between the wealthy and those with annual incomes of $70,000 to $80,000 was almost three times greater than the difference between those earning $70,000 and $80,000 per year and the median for the lowest income groups,” Killingsworth writes.

“The results show a large upward trend, with wealthy individuals being significantly happier than those earning more than $500,000.”

Important yes, but there are nuances. Although Killingsworth’s results are clear, the adage is right about one thing: Money isn’t everything. There may be a clear correlation between money and life satisfaction, but there are other important components to the complex cocktail of happiness. The expert admitted Guardian“Money is just one of many things that affect happiness, and small differences in income are usually associated with relatively small differences in happiness; but if the differences in income and wealth are large, there may be differences in happiness as well.” The reason? Freedom.

“A sense of having more control over your life can account for about 75% of the relationship 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 the life they want to live,” he says. “Money is a small part of the happiness equation all by itself. Part of the reason I study happiness is to broaden the horizons of our lives.”

Image by Vitaly Gariev (Unsplash)

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