4 ms·
Daniel Kahneman, the famous psychologist who authored the paper you're probably thinking of (the one popularized as "no increase in happiness above $75k/yr") ac
by cipheredStones 4y ago
Daniel Kahneman, the famous psychologist who authored the paper you're probably thinking of (the one popularized as "no increase in happiness above $75k/yr") actually just released a new paper a few days ago, finding that for the large majority of people, happiness continues to rise with income far past that point.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120
- lolinder 4y agoThat's a quite an interesting paper! That said, the final results still line up with my intuition, which is that there are diminishing returns, as evidenced by the log(income) relationship that that new study identifies. I already make a 90th percentile income for my area, and I don't feel that investing additional mental and emotional resources in maximizing salary is the best route forward for pursuing happiness. I think that at this point there are other axes to optimize on that provide greater marginal gains to happiness.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoA big issue with any analysis of happiness is that it's rated on a "capped" scale. For example they ask you "how happy are you 1-10". However income is "uncapped". That means there will always inherently be a sublinear relationship between the two in any analysis, because you are compressing the top end of happiness. I think for most people amounts up to something like 200-500k/yr (depending on COL) would provide increased happiness. Basically, if you ever have to worry about not having enough money, you could stand to make more. Of course that doesn't mean it's necessarily worthwhile to work more to achieve that, that would be a personal decision you have to make yourself.