Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved.
Level 3 - non-randomized controlled study
Reanalysis of observational experience-sampling survey data
PubMed 36857342 · doi:10.1073/pnas.2208661120
What was done
Authors of two conflicting landmark studies conducted an adversarial collaboration to reanalyze Killingsworth's continuous experience-sampling dataset on income and emotional well-being. They examined the relationship between log(income) and happiness across different segments of the happiness distribution to resolve discrepancies between Kahneman and Deaton's 2010 plateau finding and Killingsworth's 2021 linear-log finding.
What was found
The abstract reports no numerical values, sample sizes, or correlation coefficients. Qualitatively, reanalysis revealed that happiness increases steadily with log(income) for the majority of people and accelerates in the happiest group. A plateau pattern occurs only within the least happy subgroup. Kahneman and Deaton's original finding of an overall plateau was attributed to ceiling effects in their dichotomous measurement scale, which measured the reduction of unhappiness rather than variation in high happiness.
Why it matters
This paper reconciles a major controversy in well-being economics by showing that income is continuously associated with higher emotional well-being for most people, while demonstrating the utility of adversarial collaboration in resolving scientific disputes.
Limits
The abstract provides no exact sample size, demographic characteristics, or quantitative statistics (such as income thresholds or effect sizes). The underlying data are observational and correlational, which cannot establish whether income directly causes changes in emotional well-being.
Cited by
- context Past a certain annual income threshold (historically estimated around $70,000 per year), increases in income do not produce greater happiness.