Money And Happiness

by Patrick Appel

A new study suggests that we massively overestimate the the strength of the link:

The study worked by asking people what their own income and happiness levels were and then asking them to estimate the happiness of people on lower or higher incomes than themselves. The participants' estimates of the happiness of people on high incomes was largely accurate, but they massively underestimated the happiness of people on lower incomes. The picture was the same in a second study that asked people to estimate how happy they'd be if they earned more or less than they really did.