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Rich People Really Are Happier Than the Rest of Us: Study
By Adam Hardy MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
In this instance, more money does not equal more problems.
The old adage that money can’t buy happiness may finally need to be put to rest.
A broad body of research has long shown that money and happiness are closely related, though it was largely believed that once someone earns enough money to afford a modest, comfortable life — usually around $75,000 — the happiness benefit trails off.
However, this “happiness plateau,” as researchers call it, could be nothing more than a convenient myth. According to a new study by Matthew Killingsworth, a senior Wharton School fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, the ultra-rich are far happier than people earning $500,000 a year, who are themselves notably happier than low- and middle-income earners.
Like with income itself, Killingsworth found that there is a big gap in happiness between high- and low-income Americans.
“The difference in happiness between the top and bottom of the economic distribution was also quite large, contrary to the notion that money is only associated with small differences in happiness,” he wrote on his website. “The magnitude of the differences can be substantial.”
More money, more happiness?
While more money may have meant more problems for the late hip hop icon Notorious B.I.G., for most Americans, it means more happiness.
For years now, Killingsworth has been chipping away at the idea of the happiness plateau. In 2023, he was a lead researcher on a widely publicized study that found earnings of up to $500,000 per year indeed increased one’s reported levels of happiness.
That isn’t to suggest people stopped getting happier if they earned more than that amount. Rather, it was a limitation of good data on people wealthier than that. That’s where his new study comes into play. It’s mostly a continuation of the one released last year, now updated with the happiness levels of millionaires and billionaires.
What the new study finds is that these ultra-rich people are, in fact, much more happy than people with modest incomes in the $70,000 to $80,000 range — the level historically associated with the happiness plateau.
Previous research analyzed a limited range of incomes, Killingsworth said, making it difficult to determine the money-to-happiness ratio for people at the top of the income distribution.
Many folks then filled in the blank with the idea that “each person simply needs to get ‘enough’ and can then rationally shift all their attention to things beside money,” he said. Another common theory suggests that the trappings of high society and its keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality actually made rich people less happy.
“The simplicity this implies may be one reason why the idea of a plateau is so attractive,” he added.
But the reality is just that many previous studies that tracked income and happiness didn’t have great data on the rich. And the reason for that, at least, is obvious.
“Perhaps rich people are disinclined to spend their free time taking surveys,” he said.
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Adam Hardy is Money's lead data journalist. He writes news and feature stories aimed at helping everyday people manage their finances. He joined Money full-time in 2021 but has covered personal finance and economic topics since 2018. Previously, he worked for Forbes Advisor, The Penny Hoarder and Creative Loafing. In addition to those outlets, Adam’s work has been featured in a variety of local, national and international publications, including the Asia Times, Business Insider, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Yahoo! Finance, Nasdaq and several others. Adam graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida, where he studied magazine journalism and sociology. As a first-generation college graduate from a low-income, single-parent household, Adam understands firsthand the financial barriers that plague low-income Americans. His reporting aims to illuminate these issues. Since joining Money, Adam has already written over 300 articles, including a cover story on financial surveillance, a profile of Director Rohit Chopra of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and an investigation into flexible spending accounts, which found that workers forfeit billions of dollars annually through the workplace plans. He has also led data analysis on some of Money’s marquee rankings, including Best Places to Live, Best Places to Travel and Best Hospitals. He regularly contributes data reporting for Best Colleges, Best Banks and other lists as well. Adam also holds a multimedia storytelling certificate from Poynter’s News University and a data journalism certificate from the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) at the University of Missouri. In 2017, he received an English teaching certification from the University of Cambridge, which he utilized during his time in Seoul, South Korea. There, he taught students of all ages, from 5 to 65, and worked with North Korean refugees who were resettling in the area. Now, Adam lives in Saint Petersburg, Florida, with his pup Bambi. He is a card-carrying shuffleboard club member.