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Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year.

ABSTRACT: What is the relationship between money and well-being? Research distinguishes between two forms of well-being: people's feelings during the moments of life (experienced well-being) and people's evaluation of their lives when they pause and reflect (evaluative well-being). Drawing on 1,725,994 experience-sampling reports from 33,391 employed US adults, the present results show that both experienced and evaluative well-being increased linearly with log(income), with an equally steep slope for higher earners as for lower earners. There was no evidence for an experienced well-being plateau above $75,000/y, contrary to some influential past research. There was also no evidence of an income threshold at which experienced and evaluative well-being diverged, suggesting that higher incomes are associated with both feeling better day-to-day and being more satisfied with life overall.

SUBMITTER: Killingsworth MA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7848527 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year.

Killingsworth Matthew A MA

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20210101 4

What is the relationship between money and well-being? Research distinguishes between two forms of well-being: people's feelings during the moments of life (experienced well-being) and people's evaluation of their lives when they pause and reflect (evaluative well-being). Drawing on 1,725,994 experience-sampling reports from 33,391 employed US adults, the present results show that both experienced and evaluative well-being increased linearly with log(income), with an equally steep slope for high ...[more]

PMID: 33468644

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