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"[happiness] rises with income, but only to a point. And that point turns out to be about $75,000 a year." It seems that there is no such limit. See the second

by stared 12y ago

"[happiness] rises with income, but only to a point. And that point turns out to be about $75,000 a year." It seems that there is no such limit. See the second plot from http://danluu.com/dunning-kruger/ http://danluu.com/dunning-kruger/, or the original paper: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2013/04/subjective%20well%20being%20income/subjective%20well%20being%20income.pdf http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2013/... Just the scaling is logarithmic. However, the main conclusion remains the same - to maximize happiness, some redistribution is good.

vidarh 12y ago
If you read the article linked in the NY Times article, it is more nuanced than that. From the abstract: "We report an analysis of more than 450,000 responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a daily survey of 1,000 US residents conducted by the Gallup Organization. We find that emotional well-being (measured by questions about emotional experiences yesterday) and life evaluation (measured by Cantril's Self-Anchoring Scale) have different correlates. Income and education are more closely related to life evaluation, but health, care giving, loneliness, and smoking are relatively stronger predictors of daily emotions. When plotted against log income, life evaluation rises steadily. Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of ~$75,000. Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone. We conclude that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being."
seunosewa 12y ago
It's a unfortunate that an expensive business decision was made based on an article that wrongly interpreted a graph.
- stared 12y ago
  As I said, the conclusion remains the same. $50k->$70k is a huge boost, with a very practical impact (especially given some constant living costs), while e.g. $150k->$170k is a very gradual change.
- cpncrunch 12y ago
  Actually, that's not the original paper, it's a different one. Here is the original paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.full http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.full You can see that the income scale is actually logarithmic. Did that blog author even read the paper? Kind of ironic him throwing around Dunning Kruger references. Anyway, the happiness definitely does level off at around $75k in the Kahneman and Deaton paper. It's just that other research shows happiness increasing beyond this point.

by stared 12y ago

vidarh 12y ago

If you read the article linked in the NY Times article, it is more nuanced than that. From the abstract: "We report an analysis of more than 450,000 responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a daily survey of 1,000 US residents conducted by the Gallup Organization. We find that emotional well-being (measured by questions about emotional experiences yesterday) and life evaluation (measured by Cantril's Self-Anchoring Scale) have different correlates. Income and education are more closely related to life evaluation, but health, care giving, loneliness, and smoking are relatively stronger predictors of daily emotions. When plotted against log income, life evaluation rises steadily. Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of ~$75,000. Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone. We conclude that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being."

seunosewa 12y ago

It's a unfortunate that an expensive business decision was made based on an article that wrongly interpreted a graph.

stared 12y ago
As I said, the conclusion remains the same. $50k->$70k is a huge boost, with a very practical impact (especially given some constant living costs), while e.g. $150k->$170k is a very gradual change.
cpncrunch 12y ago
Actually, that's not the original paper, it's a different one. Here is the original paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.full http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.full You can see that the income scale is actually logarithmic. Did that blog author even read the paper? Kind of ironic him throwing around Dunning Kruger references. Anyway, the happiness definitely does level off at around $75k in the Kahneman and Deaton paper. It's just that other research shows happiness increasing beyond this point.