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ketzu OP t1_jbxabcr wrote

Reply to comment by sparkyhodgo in [OC] Well-being Distribution based on Income Bracket in the US by ketzu

Based on the article: The relationship between income and well-being is well known to be log-linear, i.e., well-being increases based on the log of income, but the spread is fairly wide. One goal of the article seemed to be to investigate the popular "you won't be any happier after making $75k/year" and found that it is not the case, besides a small, unhappy, group.

My personal interpretation is:

More money => more happy, but not as much as one might think. Many are happy while poor and many are unhappy with high income. But that might be for many different reasons: Your level of satisfactions could just move up your baseline for when to feel better: Before, being able to afford a nice steak made you happy, now you can eat steak every day and it just doesn't cut it anymore.

The improvements are "very strong" in the low end (here you can see it better I believe), but not as much later on. If you are unhappy at $75k, I think it is unlikely that a higher income will increase your well-being in the long run (I am pretty sure most people are happy moving up on the income ladder at least short term).

But people are different, maybe for an individual that's exactly what is missing in their lives.

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russellzerotohero t1_jbyes26 wrote

When was the article written. Like what is 75k with inflation?

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ketzu OP t1_jbyg3lv wrote

The $75k figure is from a 2010 study, which would be around $100k this year (the time of the new paper).

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russellzerotohero t1_jbygmkt wrote

That makes sense. I make about 80. And I do feel like if I made an extra 200-300 dollars bi weekly it would make a big difference for me in terms of financial security.

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ar243 t1_jbyzpfo wrote

I would imagine happiness does not equal how much you make, but happiness equals how much you make compared to last year.

If you're always improving your earnings, you'll be happy. But if you went from $100k to $75k, that would undoubtedly induce a lot of stress and unhappiness.

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