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Science Proves That Money Can Actually Buy Happiness

Science Proves That Money Can Actually Buy Happiness

*Does shocked face*

Amelia Ward

Amelia Ward

In news that won't come as a surprise to anyone - money can in fact buy happiness, despite what popular phrases might try to tell you.

A recent study set out to dispel the age-old myth, and as much as I hate to break it to you - it found that not only does being rich make you happy, getting richer makes you happier.

File image of my life savings.
PA

Popular opinion previously held that no amount of money you earn above $75,000 (£54,000) per year will make you any happier, but recent research has set out to debunk this.

The new study, which is called Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year, explicitly says: "There was no evidence of an income threshold at which experienced and evaluative well-being diverged, suggesting that higher incomes are associated with both feeling better day-to-day and being more satisfied with life overall."

More than a decade ago, research said that money can buy happiness, but the price is about $75,000 per year.

The study was conducted by Nobel Prize winning economists, who decided that although having a certain amount of money can increase your happiness, that joy will plateau at $75k. It said that any less than that, and sadness increased, but that earning more doesn't add anything.

Benjamins = happiness.
PA

It turns out they might be wrong. In fact, as you may expect - happiness increases past that threshold.

The study was led by Matt Killingsworth, a senior fellow at Wharton School for Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

He based his study on 1,725,994 samples which were pulled from employed adults in the US - using an app he made called Track Your Happiness.

In a recent interview with Motherboard, he said: "The way it works is that people get pinged at random moments as they go about their daily lives.

"And then I ask them some questions about their experience, just before that moment, how they feel, what they're doing, and a variety of other things."

He also got data about the participants' incomes and lives in general.

Killingsworth added: "I was really interested in understanding what was the relationship between people's level of income and their level of what we might call 'experienced well-being'."

Stock image.
Pexels

As per his study, he also asked them questions on how important they think money is, and whether having a lot of money made them 'successful'.

The study reads: "A question that asked participants 'To what extent do you think money is indicative of success in life?' similarly showed that the association between income and well-being was steeper for people who equated money and success."

It concludes: "Here, over one million real-time reports of experienced well-being from a large US sample show evidence that experienced well-being rises linearly with log income, with an equally steep slope above $80,000 as below it.

"This suggests that higher incomes may still have potential to improve people's day-to-day well-being, rather than having already reached a plateau for many people in wealthy countries."

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: Interesting