A shared universe › Blog › Money and happiness · Español
Partly, yes: with more income people rate their lives more highly and, for most of them, feel somewhat better day to day too, although each extra pound counts for less the more you have. “Money doesn’t buy happiness” is said mostly by those who have it. And “money fixes everything”, by those who do not. The studies say both are partly right.
In 2010, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman and the economist Angus Deaton analysed more than four hundred and fifty thousand responses to a daily survey in the United States. They saw that the higher the income, the better people rated their lives. But day-to-day mood, how much joy or how much worry they felt, improved with income only up to a point. Beyond that, earning more changed little. They put that point at around seventy-five thousand dollars a year.
Their work left a useful distinction. One thing is what you think of your life when you stop to weigh it up; another is how you feel on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. Money seemed to influence the first far more than the second.
Later studies with more data, in which Kahneman himself took part, have found that for most people well-being keeps rising with income, though more and more slowly.
In 2021, the researcher Killingsworth gathered more than 1.7 million responses from over thirty-three thousand working adults, who were asked at different moments of the day how they felt. He found no point beyond which mood stopped improving. To settle the contradiction, Killingsworth, Kahneman and Mellers worked together and in 2023 published a fresh analysis of the data: the levelling off appeared only among the least happy people; for everyone else, well-being kept growing with income.
What counts in all these studies is proportion, not amount. A thousand more a year changes the life of someone on a low income a great deal and barely registers for someone who earns a lot. That is why money weighs enormously when it is short, and far less when the basics are covered.
It is not only how much you have that matters, but how you use it. In 2008, Elizabeth Dunn, Aknin and Norton published a study in the journal Science: giving money to others or spending it on them went with greater happiness, and people randomly chosen to spend a sum on others ended the day happier than those who spent it on themselves.
Years later, Whillans, Dunn and other colleagues surveyed more than six thousand people in the United States, Canada, Denmark and the Netherlands. Those who paid for services that saved them time were more satisfied with their lives, and in an experiment with working adults, spending to gain time brought more happiness than spending on a thing.
If the giving side interests you, here is why helping others also does the helper good.
Time with the people you love, feeling useful, having someone to call. These are things that never appear on a payslip and that weigh a great deal in how we live. The longest study of adult life reached a similar conclusion, which we tell in what really makes a good life.
Worrying about not making it to the end of the month is one of the worries that wears people down most and that is talked about least. It feels shameful to say out loud, and it goes round and round at night.
If you feel you cannot go on, do not carry it without company. In Spain you can talk to a person at the Teléfono de la Esperanza, 717 003 717, at any time. If you are thinking of ending your life, call 024: it is free, confidential and answered 24 hours a day. If there is immediate danger, call 112. In another country, call your local emergency number or a helpline there.
In A shared universe you can light a star with “What weighs on me”, without saying who you are and without accounts or sign-up. You write in a few lines what is worrying you, and other people can keep it company with a tap or a few words of encouragement. Seeing that someone has kept it company pays no bills, but it can take away a little of that feeling of going through it with nobody.