Does money bring happiness? Yes, but only from this figure

It is one of the great questions in the history of humanity: does money bring happiness? And if so, from what amount? Some experts have tried to answer it, not without difficulties.

Can money help you achieve happiness? It doesn’t matter if you are more or less capitalist, you have probably asked yourself this question on some occasion.

And, beyond the fact that there are things that money cannot buy (immortality, for starters, or we would already have a few billionaires eternal), people usually agree that helping, usually helps.

Well, scientists have also asked themselves the same question, only in their case they have sought an answer that is based on concrete data. The question is not only whether money really brings happiness, but if so, how much would we be talking about? ¿Is there an amount beyond which the problems seem much more distant?

Explaining the relationship between money and happiness

The first people who decided to answer the question of whether money brings happiness or not were two prestigious professors: Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, both Nobel Prize winners, so they were not just anyone. AND how did they want to discover it? In the oldest way that exists: by asking people directly, through surveys.

During his investigation, both scientists tested no less than half a million Americans, delving into their finances and looking at whether or not they really felt happy. Finally, and after carefully studying the data collected, they published a study in 2010, which attracted a lot of media attention.

For them, there was no doubt about it: indeed, money brings happiness. What’s more, Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton dared to give a figure: Happiness was guaranteed, with certain nuances, for all those who earned more than $75,000 a year. At least, in relation to the so-called “everyday well-being”, the way of facing day to day life.

However, the thing did not stop there. In 2021, another researcher, Matthew Killingsworth, built on the previous work of his colleagues to draw his own conclusions on the matter, and definitively answers whether money brings happiness or not. In his case, Killingsworth determined that the relationship between happiness and money didn’t stop at $75,000: it kept going.

Are we talking about happiness or unhappiness?

The most striking thing about the matter is that, it seems, Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton had made a considerable error during their investigation. They both thought that, as they intended, they were measuring people’s happiness, associating it with their income. Later, they realized that this was not exactly the case, but rather the other way around.

What they were calculating was not happiness itself, but unhappiness. Or to be precise, the way money mitigated it. Is not the same? No, not exactly. It may seem like an insignificant nuance, but the small inaccuracy has made the question topical, once again.

When does money bring happiness? Is the figure they offered at the time of $75,000 valid? Surely they are not the last to try to answer this question. After all, who hasn’t asked it at some point?

Known how we work on Computertoday.

Tags: Curiosities