3 Surprising Insights About Money and Happiness
3 Surprising Insights About Money and Happiness
Adapted from http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/on-retirement/2014/04/29/4-truths-about-money-and-happiness
People have probably been wondering whether or not money buys happiness since money was first used in the Middle East sometime around the 9th millennium B.C.
This is also a common topic on STM as well, subject to a lot of different personal opinions. Recent studies, however, have come up with some answers to the age-old question that go beyond conjecture and personal opinion and have some basis in science and statistics. They also offer us a few suggestions about how our choices about money can make us happier.
1 . INSIGHT ONE: What makes you happy on a day to day basis is correlated to income, BUT only up to $75,000
Nobody knows exactly what happiness is, or has figured out why similar circumstances can make one person happy and another person discontented. But recent studies have described two basic kinds of happiness.
One is called “emotional well being” and refers to a person’s day-to-day experience, including how often a person laughs and feels stress, anger, joy and affection. These are the factors that make life pleasant on a daily basis.
The evidence suggests that beyond a certain point, more money does not make a person happier.
- A 2010 study by Princeton University economists Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton allows that people in the lower economic groups are not as happy as people who make more money. But beyond a level of about $75,000 a year, more income does not produce more emotional well-being.
- To be sure, this is the US average, and it will ...