Suppose someone transfers a million euros to you tomorrow. Nothing in return, no conditions and no unpleasant surprise in the small print. Would it make you happier? I suspect many people would initially answer with a fairly emphatic yes. They would have good reasons. Debts could disappear, decisions become easier and worries recurring every month might suddenly lose their importance.
Now change the example. You already have thirty million and receive another million. What improves? Perhaps quite a lot. Perhaps surprisingly little. Someone already free to control their time and afford almost anything is likely to benefit differently from an additional sum than someone worrying about rent.
The real difficulty comes with the word "happy". Do we mean satisfaction when someone reflects on their life? A pleasant Tuesday with laughter and little stress? Security, personal freedom and feeling equipped for future difficulties? Research examines these things differently. That is precisely why it has produced so many apparently contradictory headlines.
I find "it depends" a rather unsatisfying answer. It is still considerably better than a dollar figure taken out of context and presented as the scientifically established end of all happiness.
Happiness is not a single measurement
Research often distinguishes evaluating your life from emotional experience in everyday life. The first asks how satisfied people are with life overall. The second concerns particular moments: cheerful, relaxed, sad, tense or worried.
This is not academic hair-splitting. You can judge your circumstances exceptionally favourably and still have a dreadful day. You can also be thoroughly enjoying yourself while knowing your finances or family situation are difficult. Both answers are true; they answer different questions.
Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton explicitly began with this distinction in a 2010 analysis. For life evaluation, they used a scale on which respondents placed their lives as a whole. For emotional experience, they asked about feelings the previous day. These sound similar but provide different information. Higher income may seem to improve someone's life without having made them smile more often last Wednesday.
Discussing whether money makes people happy therefore requires at least identifying which kind of happiness we mean. Lumping every answer under one term makes research findings very easy to misrepresent.
Income, wealth and feeling secure
A second stumbling block is money itself. Income is money received over time. Wealth is accumulated assets less debts. High income can lead to substantial wealth, but need not. Someone can also own considerable wealth without drawing an especially high annual income.
That matters psychologically. A high salary can coexist with large fixed expenses and little financial room. Someone with lower current income and sufficient reserves may feel considerably more relaxed. The form of wealth matters too. A business, property and readily available money differ in how immediately they enable decisions.
In 2017, Elisabeth Brüggen and her co-authors proposed a conceptual framework for financial well-being. It centres on perceiving yourself as able to maintain your desired living standard and financial freedom now and in the future. This is a theoretical proposal, not a measurement of billionaires' happiness. It helps explain why people with identical sums may assess their financial position very differently.
The best-known money-and-happiness studies mainly examine income. Turning their results unquestioningly into statements about wealth loses a crucial distinction halfway through. An income threshold is not automatically a wealth threshold.
Where the famous $75,000 came from
Consider the number that still haunts articles and conversations years later. For their 2010 PNAS study, Kahneman and Deaton analysed more than 450,000 responses to a large American survey in 2008 and 2009. Their data showed life evaluation continuing to rise with household income. Measured daily emotional well-being, however, flattened above approximately $75,000 in annual income.
The difference between the measures was the central finding. Higher-income people assessed their lives more favourably on average, including above that level. In the measurement used, they did not report indefinitely more positive daily emotions and fewer negative ones.
This often became a much simpler message: beyond $75,000, more money does not make you happier. Wonderfully catchy, and printable on a mug. It is not an accurate summary of the study. The amount concerned American households in a particular period, not people everywhere, and certainly not a worldwide limit expressed in today's money. Emotional experience was also assessed through yes-or-no questions about the previous day.
A statistical average is not an individual ceiling. Some people worry about money far above a particular income; others live very contentedly on less. A curve cannot prescribe how much someone ought to earn.
A different method, a different finding
Psychologist Matthew Killingsworth published a 2021 study challenging that interpretation. His data contained over 1.7 million snapshots of well-being from 33,391 employed US adults. Participants used smartphones to report how they felt during everyday life.
Both life evaluation and immediately reported well-being rose, on average, with logarithmic income. Killingsworth found no clear $75,000 threshold beyond which emotional well-being stopped improving. Unlike the earlier analysis, his study used a finer response scale for momentary feelings.
Precision matters here too. These were self-reports from a particular group: employed US adults participating in this kind of survey. The initial finding is an association. It does not straightforwardly establish that a pay rise would produce the same emotional benefit for everyone. Extremely high incomes were also uncommon in the sample.
The finding nevertheless mattered. A much-cited ceiling, often treated as settled knowledge, required examination again. This time, research progressed through something other than the usual mutual attempts at refutation.
When the researchers worked it out together
In 2023, Matthew Killingsworth, Daniel Kahneman and Barbara Mellers published a joint reanalysis. Their collaboration explicitly sought to resolve conflicting findings. This is called adversarial collaboration: people starting from different positions work together towards a more convincing explanation. For a topic generating so many confident headlines, it was a refreshingly measured approach.
The new analysis confirmed that emotional well-being continued to rise with income on average. A different pattern emerged, however, when respondents were separated by their overall levels of well-being. Among the least happy, the relationship flattened at higher incomes. Among happier groups, it continued upwards, sometimes more strongly among the happiest.
Measurement explained an important part of the disagreement. The older study's yes-or-no questions had limited ability to capture differences within higher happiness levels. The newer continuous scale was more sensitive there. Conversely, the 2021 analysis had overlooked how a rising overall average could conceal different patterns within groups.
You sometimes read that the disagreement was finally resolved by showing that above $100,000, only already unhappy people gain no further happiness. Even that is much too crude as a general rule for living. The findings concern group patterns in particular data; the threshold is not precisely established for each individual. To me, the collaboration's main conclusion lies elsewhere: the relationship with income differs according to where people already stand emotionally.
Money apparently has no uniform psychological effect that one average can adequately describe for everyone.
Why a bigger number has different effects
Higher income can expand options. For someone short of money, it may mean finally replacing broken heating, working less overtime or paying an unexpected bill. Someone on a very high income already has many such options. Further gains may work through other routes: additional choice, larger reserves or funding ambitious plans.
Experiencing money differently across circumstances makes a universal threshold difficult. Location matters too. Housing costs, social protection, healthcare, family responsibilities and economic insecurity vary considerably between countries and even regions.
For a 2018 paper, Andrew Jebb and colleagues examined Gallup World Poll data covering more than 1.7 million people. Their models suggested different satiation points for life evaluation and emotional well-being, with substantial regional variation. In some regions, income above a modelled threshold was even associated with less favourable life evaluation.
That neither proves abundant money is harmful nor confirms a universal happiness ceiling. It shows how results depend on populations, model assumptions and measurement. The study examines statistical relationships, not experiments randomly allocating different incomes. Turning such figures into a personal maximum asks more of them than they can deliver.
What about research finding no ceiling at all?
In a 2013 analysis, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers examined several datasets and different forms of subjective well-being. They found no convincing general point above which higher income stopped being associated with greater well-being. That finding also reflects the methods and populations in the data used.
A brief mathematical detour helps, without turning this into a maths lesson. Many studies consider income on a logarithmic scale. A rise from 20,000 to 40,000 is treated similarly to one from 100,000 to 200,000 because each doubles the amount. In currency terms, those increases are obviously very different.
If well-being rises roughly linearly with logarithmic income, more money can remain associated with greater well-being while the relationship per additional euro becomes smaller. Two apparently conflicting statements can therefore both hold: the data show no clear upper ceiling, and the same extra sum has a weaker average association with well-being at high incomes than low ones.
That does not mean a scientific curve can calculate the personal value of every euro. The statistical shape of a relationship is not a calculator for individual life decisions.
What happens when people actually win money?
Cause and effect remain a fundamental problem. Satisfied, healthy people may find professional advancement easier. Certain personality traits may influence both income and well-being. High-income people often differ from lower-income people in other ways, too. A correlation between money and happiness cannot fully establish which way causation runs.
Studies of unexpected changes in wealth are therefore interesting. In a study published in 2020, Erik Lindqvist, Robert Östling and David Cesarini examined Swedish lottery participants, some of whose large wins were many years earlier. Comparing winners with suitable control groups, they sought to estimate the longer-term effect of randomly assigned wealth increases.
The results are striking. Larger wins improved overall life satisfaction in the long term. The relationship was particularly clear for satisfaction with finances. Estimated effects on more immediate happiness and mental health were smaller and not statistically distinguishable from zero. For life satisfaction, the authors found no evidence that the advantage simply disappeared over the period studied.
The study supports the view that greater wealth can genuinely make a difference. It also challenges the convenient idea that a windfall improves every form of well-being equally. Lottery winnings are a particular kind of wealth increase, though. They cannot replace research on business sellers or people whose fortunes have grown over decades.
Are millionaires happier with still more millions?
Most data so far concern income. What about people already holding substantial wealth? One particularly relevant study comes from Grant Donnelly and colleagues. Across two samples comprising over 4,000 millionaires, they examined associations between reported happiness, wealth levels and wealth sources.
Compared with less wealthy millionaires, more favourable happiness scores appeared only at very high wealth levels, above approximately eight or ten million US dollars depending on the sample. Differences were moderate. Researchers also found an association involving earned versus inherited wealth and reported happiness. That is interesting, but not a causal claim that hard work makes you happy or inheritance makes you unhappy.
Millionaire samples are particularly relevant to this project because they are closer to its actual intended audience than general income surveys. They still cannot tell us how happy a particular person would be with additional wealth. Differences between people owning eight and twelve million do not automatically explain what transferring four million would do to one owner.
Whether the source of wealth makes a difference therefore deserves an article of its own. Here, it is enough to recognise that wealth's size tells only part of the story.
Money protects against some problems, not against life
Debates about money and happiness sometimes sound as though we must choose between money doing everything and doing nothing. Realistic answers lie between. Paying a bill may reduce immediate stress. Financial reserves may make leaving a bad job easier. Free time can support relationships or health. These are real advantages, not suspect substitutes for happiness.
Money cannot reliably prevent certain experiences, though. Conflict, loss, illness and disappointment also happen to wealthy people. A large sum may help with some problems without promising emotional invulnerability. Kahneman and Deaton's study also showed health difficulties, loneliness and other circumstances mattered substantially for daily emotional experience.
Using those limits to claim romantically that money is peripheral to well-being would be equally wrong. Financial insecurity can burden every other area of life. Research into money and happiness therefore also concerns the different pressures money can reduce.
Why luxury eventually becomes normal separately considers adaptation to pleasant things. Not feeling rich despite millions has its own focus too. Both may influence perceptions of finances without explaining every finding about happiness.
What we can reasonably take from this
After researching the subject, I am struck by how often popular accounts convert statistical relationships into personal rules. The studies are much more careful than headlines suggest. They distinguish life evaluation from feelings, income groups from individuals, observed associations from actual changes after windfalls. They also acknowledge that methods influence findings.
For your own life, this yields neither an instruction to accumulate as much as possible nor advice to dispose of wealth quickly. More money can increase security and freedom and be associated with greater well-being, sometimes even at high incomes. The relationship's strength and mechanisms depend on the population studied, initial financial position, personal circumstances and what is being measured as happiness.
The idea behind Tired of Wealth is a deliberately unusual offer to people voluntarily wishing to give wealth away. It does not assume affluent people are unhappy. Anyone enjoying their wealth has no scientific reason to be talked out of that pleasure. Anyone considering a gift should expect no guaranteed psychological effect.
Perhaps that is the less boring side of "it depends". Research challenges the comforting idea that a particular sum settles the matter for everyone. It equally challenges the claim that money above a particular level can improve nothing.
Money can make life easier. How that life feels depends on more than the number making it possible.
Sources
Kahneman, Daniel, and Angus Deaton (2010). “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(38), pp. 16489 to 16493. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1011492107
Killingsworth, Matthew A. (2021). “Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(4), e2016976118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2016976118
Killingsworth, Matthew A., Daniel Kahneman and Barbara Mellers (2023). “Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(10), e2208661120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2208661120
Brüggen, Elisabeth C., Jens Hogreve, Maria Holmlund, Sertan Kabadayi and Martin Löfgren (2017). “Financial well-being: A conceptualization and research agenda”. Journal of Business Research, 79, pp. 228 to 237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.03.013
Jebb, Andrew T., Louis Tay, Ed Diener and Shigehiro Oishi (2018). “Happiness, income satiation and turning points around the world”. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, pp. 33 to 38. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0277-0
Stevenson, Betsey, and Justin Wolfers (2013). “Subjective Well-Being and Income: Is There Any Evidence of Satiation?”. American Economic Review, 103(3), pp. 598 to 604. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.103.3.598
Lindqvist, Erik, Robert Östling and David Cesarini (2020). “Long-Run Effects of Lottery Wealth on Psychological Well-Being”. The Review of Economic Studies, 87(6), pp. 2703 to 2726. https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdaa006
Donnelly, Grant E., Tianyi Zheng, Emily Haisley and Michael I. Norton (2018). “The Amount and Source of Millionaires’ Wealth (Moderately) Predict Their Happiness”. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(5), pp. 684 to 699. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217744766