Can money bring happiness? What new research has shown  

Nobel laureate economist and his team give a new perspective to this great question

Can anyone say for sure if money brings happiness? Does human happiness have any… specific value? This is a question that philosophers, economists and social scientists have been grappling with and trying to answer for decades. 

In new research conducted by Nobel Prize winning economist, Daniel Kahneman, along with Matthew Killingsworth from the University of Pennsylvania, they provide a new perspective on this question and possibly one side of the answer to whether money buys happiness. In fact, Killingsworth in his own research in 2021, had found that happiness has a “ceiling” of $200,000 and not $75,000. 

The two researchers decided to join forces to finally find out what is true and whether happiness stops at an amount of money or not. In their new study, the two researchers looked at 33,391 adults aged 18 to 65 who live in the United States, work and report a household income of at least $85,000 a year.

To measure their happiness, participants were asked to report their feelings at random times throughout the day via a special smartphone app called ” Track Your Happiness” .

The study, published last March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, reached two main conclusions. First, that happiness continues to increase with income—even when it has increased greatly—  and second, that money does bring happiness . However, the researchers also found that a lot of money didn’t make unhappiness go away . 

Their new findings show that, for most people, happiness does improve with higher incomes, up to $500,000 a year . Although participants above this income were “fairly rare,” resulting in no comprehensive data for this group, the study noted.

Specifically, about 20% of the participants felt less unhappy while earning more money , but this was only up to a point, with the result that the negative feelings did not disappear due to their wealth. For the most part, people feel happier and happier when they earn more money .

” The exception is people who are financially affluent but unhappy (such as those who have experienced a loss or are depressed),” the research says. For example, “if someone is rich but unhappy, then more money won’t help them ,” said one of the two researchers, Killingsworth, concluding that ” money is not the secret to happiness, but it can probably help.” a little” .