Updated research demonstrates that the relationship between income and happiness is curvilinear, where happiness rises steeply initially and continues to rise beyond $75,000–$100,000 at a shallower slope.
"The update to that study is it's a curvi-linear graph where it's a really steep ascent of happiness, and then north of 75 to 100k the curve still goes up, but at a much shallower rate. And if you measure it individual by individual, it actually is huge variance." (said at 0:35:43)
Updated research by Killingsworth (2021) and an adversarial collaboration by Killingsworth, Kahneman, and Mellers (2023) re-evaluated the classic Kahneman & Deaton (2010) finding of a happiness plateau at $75,000. On an absolute income scale, the relationship between income and well-being is curvilinear (linear with log-transformed income), rising steeply at lower income levels and continuing to increase at higher incomes with diminishing absolute dollar returns. Furthermore, the 2023 collaboration revealed substantial heterogeneity across individuals: for the least happy 20%, well-being plateaus above approximately $100,000, whereas for the majority of happier individuals, well-being continues to rise steadily or even accelerates past that threshold.
- supports: Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2021)
"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." (abstract, results, passage verified)
pubmedfull study (doi) - supports: Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2023)
"A reanalysis of Killingsworth's experienced sampling data confirmed the flattening pattern only for the least happy people. Happiness increases steadily with log(income) among happier people, and even accelerates in the happiest group. Complementary nonlinearities contribute to the overall linear-log relationship." (abstract, results, passage verified)
pubmedfull study (doi)