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... but it should be noted that there's a leveling-off as well. Once you're basically living comfortably and have the requisite free time, more money alone does
by lomnakkus 11y ago
... but it should be noted that there's a leveling-off as well. Once you're basically living comfortably and have the requisite free time, more money alone doesn't actually make you any happier.
(Too tired to look up the research references, but I'm pretty sure there are some pretty solid findings out there on e.g. lottery winners, wealthy people, etc.)
- evanpw 11y agoYou have to distinguish between happiness as emotional well-being (i.e., do you have more happy or sad moments on an average day), vs happiness as life satisfaction (i.e., how happy are you with how your life is going in general). There's some evidence that the former measure plateaus at some income level, but there's also significant evidence that the latter doesn't: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.full http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.full
- lomnakkus 11y agoThat's very intriguing, thanks!
- zeroonetwothree 11y agoThis is not really true. It's just an artifact of the way happiness research is done. There's no cap on income, but typically happiness is rated from 1-10. Thus you see a "leveling off". If you use a log scale you actually see a continuous increase.
- aaron695 11y ago> ... but it should be noted that there's a leveling-off as well. This is not really true. It's a bit of a logish function though. Lottery winners are very happy, but not 10 times someone on $100,000. Just a reasonably bit more. I think one does have to be careful of negatives to get the money though, an extra $10,000 for a 2 hour per day commute I think would not pay off. You can't hack the system and rely just on money for happiness.