While much has been discussed about the wide (and widening) wealth gap, there also appears to be a happiness gap. According to a new study, money can, in fact, buy you some measure of happiness.
The study, “Money and Happiness: Extended Evidence Against Satiation,” by Matt Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, found that the more money individuals have, the more satisfied they are.
To conduct his research, Killingsworth, who tracks happiness for his research project, TrackYourHappiness.org, surveyed 33,269 US-employed adults aged 18-65 with household incomes of at least $10,000 each year. Participants were asked questions on a scale named “satisfaction with life.”
Killingsworth also pulled data from extremely wealthy participants with median net worths of $3M to $7.8M. He even noted the significance of this research, considering how rare it is to find hard data on how happy the rich are.
“Perhaps rich people are disinclined to spend their free time taking surveys,” he wrote in the study.
The happiness researcher found that people with net worths over seven digits scored between 5.5 and 6 points on his 7-point satisfaction scale. Meanwhile, people who make roughly $100,000 a year scored 4.6, with people who make between $15,000 and $30,000 a year scoring 4 points. In other words, the middle class isn’t much happier than those with a lower income.
While his study is a watershed that contradicts conventional wisdom and prior research, it should be noted the work is self-published and hasn’t been peer-reviewed.
What defines the middle class has changed over time, but according to the latest Pew Research, it’s considered having an income that is two-thirds to double the national median income, roughly between $75,000 and $150,000.
In 2021, 55% of Black households were in the lower wealth tier, with less than $41,700 in wealth, while only 45% were in the middle or upper-wealth tiers. In 2022, the median net worth of Black households was $44,900. According to the US Census Bureau, Black households comprised 13.6% of all US households in 2024, but currently only hold 4.7% of the country’s wealth.
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“The difference in life satisfaction between the wealthy and those with incomes of $70-80,000 [annually] was nearly three times as large as the difference between $70-80,000 [annually] and the average of the two lowest income groups,” the study read.
Killingsworth also found wealthy individuals were “substantially and statistically significantly happier than people earning over $500,000 each year.”
Speaking to the Guardian, he told the publication he was surprised by how much of a difference money made in people’s overall sense of happiness.
“Money is just one of many things that matters for happiness, and a small difference in income tends to be associated with pretty small differences in happiness,” Killingsworth said. “But if the differences in income/wealth are very large, the differences in happiness can be, too.”
