Money, meaning, and happiness
Many of us have heard the idea that happiness plateaus at an income level of about $75,000 a year. As it turns out, there’s no such magical number and no such plateau, after all. The 2010 study by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton found that what they called “emotional well-being” didn’t rise after the $75K. Their conclusion seemed to support the truism that “money can’t buy happiness,” and perhaps offered some reassurance that one didn’t need to strive to be a millionaire to have a happy life. More recent work, however, suggests that the methods they used to measure happiness were unreliable, calling into question the notion that happiness tops out at a specific income level.
I probably shouldn’t be surprised at the bizarre methods psychology researchers use to measure complex and difficult to define feelings such as happiness. Still, I was taken aback to see that the measure used to produce the widely-reported and accepted finding that happiness doesn’t increase with income beyond a certain point was asking respondents whether they had smiled the previous day.
What in the actual what is that supposed to tell us about emotional well-being? I smile at the delivery guy to be polite, not because I’m happy. I smile at my cats, for who knows what reason, but it’s reflexive, and says little about my actual emotional state. As a woman, I smile all the time in situations where I actually want to punch someone in the throat, because that’s how good girls keep ourselves safe and employed.
Attempting to figure out why the 2010 study had been contradicted by a study by Matthew Killingsworth in 2021, which found that happiness continued to rise with income, Kahneman, Killingsworth and Barbara Mellers “engaged in an adversarial collaboration to search for a coherent interpretation of both studies.” Their 2023 publication finds that “most subjects reported increased emotional well-being all the way up to $500,000 in annual income.” Finally, some good news for rich people!
Killingsworth (I mean, what a great name for a guy who researches money and happiness) used a more continuous measure to arrive at his data on emotional well-being: Subjects would get random pings on their phones throughout the day, asking them to rate their mood right then on a scale from “very bad” to “very good.”
From the perspective of someone who isn’t a psych researcher (although I am a social scientist), this seems like a slight improvement over the “did you smile yesterday?” measure. But I still have to wonder: Is happiness a “mood?” How long does a mood have to last before it constitutes a state of emotional well-being? Do periodic bad moods mean you aren’t well, emotionally? (A total lack of bad moods would also feel like a red flag for emotional wellness to me, again, a person who is not an expert but who does experience emotions and moods).
As I pondered the reporting on this updated finding, as well as the weird ways researchers create proxies for happiness, I couldn’t help but think that we have quite an obsession with linking, or de-linking, money and happiness. Obviously, we’re all swimming in the tepid, murky waters of late capitalism, with its twinned economic imperative to accumulate assets and cultural imperative to feel good about it. Depending on your feelings about capitalism (and whether you have sufficient floaties to keep your head above those murky waters), you might welcome or dismiss research that connects money and happiness.
What if there’s a whole set of questions that aren’t even being considered in this research, though? I’m thinking about our personal (and to some extent cultural) relationships to money and more importantly, the meanings we attach to money. It seems to me that this would also have significant bearing on whether, for any one of us, money (or a lack thereof) brings happiness.
Last year I wrote about financial advice that digs deep into money feelings.
Money self-help authors like Bari Tessler, Nancy Levin, and Tara Schuster insist that we have to understand our own complicated feelings about money in order to build what Tessler calls “financial happiness.” This means untangling the narratives about money that we heard from our families growing up, that circulated in our communities, and that inform how we relate to money today. Money is rarely associated with one straightforward emotion; rather, there’s a messy mix that could include shame, fear, anxiety, relief, excitement, and any number of other emotions, many of which are strong and some of which we seek to avoid.
From the more recent money and happiness research, which suggests that happiness can increase with rising income, Killingsworth surmises that more money allows people to feel more in control of their lives and to have more choices. It’s hard to argue with that. Still, having more money doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t feel anxious, fearful, or shameful about that money. After all, wealthy people seem perversely anxious about money, perhaps more so than folks with very little.
In my own experience, receiving an inheritance has objectively improved my financial situation and enabled some control and more choices. But it’s also mired in sadness at the sudden loss of my father, a weighty feeling of responsibility, and a visceral fear of fucking up.
I don’t say any of this to provoke feelings of compassion for the wealthy. Just to point out that an emotionally-fraught relationship to money can exist at any income level, and this might impede the potential for money to generate happiness. Or at least produce mixed feelings about the happiness that money buys.
I would love to know more about how our emotions around money, and the meaning we attach to it and the things it enables, relates to overall “life satisfaction,” as Killingsworth calls it. The meaning attached to accumulating objects of conspicuous consumption is surely different than the meaning that comes from being generous or charitable with money, or using money to maintain and strengthen relationships (being able to afford to spend time with family and friends, to create special shared experiences, and so on).
These questions are admittedly adjacent to the more straightforward questions and simple measures used in the research. However, they bring me full circle to wondering why we’re asking about money and happiness, rather than about money and a meaningful life.
Although happiness and meaningfulness can overlap, a lot of research shows that happiness can be fleeting while meaning is longer lasting, and meaningful experiences are not always happy ones, but we wouldn’t typically want to swap the meaningful ones for superficially happy ones. Happiness is more present-focused, and more about satisfying one’s immediate wants and needs. Meaningfulness links past, present, and future, and is often about giving to others rather than ourselves.
Perhaps the most famous account of this difference in found in Victor Frankl’s 1946 book, Man’s Search for Meaning. How, in a Nazi concentration camp, (a place where happiness was near impossible), could people still seek—and find—meaning in their lives? Frankl’s argument that humans have a primary drive toward meaning, rather than fleeting pleasure, has been influential for decades.
In a more recent take, journalist Emily Esfahani Smith investigated the differences between happiness and meaning for her book The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness. She also argues that we all have a fundamental need to connect to something bigger than ourselves, to find purpose, belonging, and transcendence.
Unfortunately, the quest for happiness doesn’t always align with the quest for meaning. It may even get in the way, if we pursue short-term “good vibes” and ignore the bigger picture of crafting a meaningful life. Capitalism, of course, wants us to do the former. It dangles shiny, happy objects in front of us and promises escape from the challenges of life (which are usually where meaning happens!).
Even if we accept the latest findings about money and happiness (and I’m still not 100% sold on that), do they tell us anything about money and meaning? Do we know much about this, beyond the anecdotal? Where do our “money feelings” fit in this picture? Can psychology research even really answer these questions for us? Or are these the kinds of answers we have to pursue individually, in our own lives, as we try to navigate our culture’s insistence on the pursuit of happiness with the human need for meaning?
What I’m reading: My Darkest Prayer, by S.A. Cosby. This is Cosby’s first novel, and it lacks the polish of his subsequent books, but you can see the seeds of his unque style being planted.
What I’m watching: The last season of Transplant. Despite the occasional—but not subtle—Tylenol product placements, this show really grew on me over its four seasons, and I’ll miss it when it ends.
Bonus: A very addictive song about money.