The relationship between money and happiness

Happiness is related to money. It's that simple, but with nuances. Some authors are quick to assert that "money is not everything" or that "it does not buy happiness." The first we could accept, the second needs explanation. With the connection between salary and personal well-being established, experts suggest that there are income levels and ranges to measure to what extent this is true.

On the other hand, if money is happiness, to what extent does income affect it? Is there an income limit that cannot increase that happiness? A work published in the journal Nature reveals some curiosities. However, some psychologists, such as the American Charles Whitehead, remain skeptical of this issue and deny the conclusions of the study that we will discuss below.

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Money does not buy happiness?

Socially it is more than accepted that money does not bring happiness. Moreover, in 2010 a study was published by the University of Victoria (New Zealand) that states, indeed, that money was equal to well-being but that, in no way, was it capable of "buying" doses of happiness. In this study, almost 500,000 interviews were carried out from some 70 countries around the globe. The conclusions were that

freedom and free time are above accumulated wealth when it comes to providing well-being.

Some believe that this was in response to an intentional study to calm the masses at times of economic crisis and a decline in the purchasing power of citizens worldwide. To put it in some way, this study was an emotional relief for those groups that were convinced that Bill Gates and Amancios Ortega lived happier.

Well, they weren't so wrong. Another joint study between Harvard University and Columbia (USA) contradicts the research of their ocean colleagues. It's more of a semantic issue. Money doesn't buy happiness, true, but it does It helps to be able to invest in it in free time. What unequivocally distinguishes happy from unhappy people is the variable time. If we have a good income and we know how to manage leisure time with work life, we can have much more chances of being happy, while the population with less money has to accept precarious jobs of long hours or multiple jobs to be able to survive.

The problem is that the reverse is not true. If we have little money but a lot of free time we will not be able to invest in our well-being, we do not have enough resources to be able to take advantage of free hours. The logic is this: moments without obligations minimize the effects of stress and anxiety, which increases happiness.

The limits between the relationship money versus happiness

To determine the correlation between happiness and money, American sociologists and expert researchers in human behavior Andrew T. Jebb, Louis Tay, Ed Diener, and Shigehiro Oishi conducted their study using the Gallup method. The Gallup Organization is specifically in charge of measuring, analyzing and studying the behavior of individuals to resolve issues that concern society in general.

Having chosen the Gallup World Poll, the authors drew on a panel of 2 million people from around the world, controlling for demographic factors. that determine the income by area in which the data collection is carried out, randomly to minimize any type of bias. Once the study has been completed, an enlightening result has been obtained: there is a threshold beyond which earning more money does not provide more happiness. This limit ranges between $60,000 and $90,000 annual. Figures that exceed that amount are unable to generate more happiness or emotional stability.

Free time, unknown factor

As it is an extremely complex topic to draw exact conclusions, each author who intervenes in this type of of studies or investigations, tries to collect different variables and statements to support a more realistic. For this, both Elizabeth Dunn, a research collaborator from Columbia University, and Louis Tay, agree that the time factor is the mother of all unknowns.

A parallel study was carried out in order to concretize this thesis. With a smaller number of participants, just over a thousand of them (and only in the United States), well-off people were brought together, billionaires and people from the middle or lower middle class, and more than half of those surveyed said they did not know the advantage of investing in reducing stress by unloading from other responsibilities that implies having more time for them.