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Money and Happiness: Extended Evidence Against Satiation

Money income wealth happiness well-being satiation plateau

If happiness plateaued completely at a modest level of wealth or income, one might argue that this would simplify human life: Each person simply needs to get “enough” and can then rationally shift all of their attention to things besides money. To be clear, by “things” that money could provide, I am not referring only to material possessions, but instead to the broad range of goods and services that can be purchased, and even to the sense of freedom and peace of mind that could arise from financial abundance. But if one does exist, these results suggest that it is considerably higher than incomes of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, and potentially beyond the range of most studies that have examined the association between money and happiness in the past.

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