Apparently, This Is How Much Money You Need To Be Making To Be Truly Happy
Now, where can we get a salary like this...
Now, where can we get a salary like this...
Now, next time your annual review comes around and it's time to talk money with your boss, remember this one thing: according to an economist from the University of Princeton, there's an optimum salary for happiness.
Angus Deaton, who won the Nobel Prize in 2015 for economics - in part for his work on the connection between wealth and happiness - says that there is a 'happiness plateau' above an annual salary of $75,000, or £49,000.
Apparently, once your salary goes over this figure, the 'everyday contentment' and 'frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger and affection that make one's life pleasant or unpleasant' don't increase - but what does increase is 'life assessment' and 'the thoughts that people have about their life when they think about it.'
However, if your salary is low, you are more likely to experience heightened emotional pain 'associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health and being alone'.
The study, which Deaton carried out with Daniel Kahneman, concluded that 'high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evalutation and low emotional well-being'.
In other words, money can buy you happiness - to some extent. But only to a certain extent.
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As Deaton himself said, 'Giving people more income beyond $75,000 is not going to do much for their daily mood… but it is going to make them feel they have a better life.
'As an economist I tend to think money is good for you, and am pleased to find some evidence for that.'
Maybe this is all the evidence we need to get a huge raise this January?
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