Sep 9, 2010

What Salary Buys Happiness in Your City?

Posted by Wendy Weber

We all know money can’t buy us love…but can it buy us happiness?

Fascinating blog entry on WSJ.com “Real Time Economics” blog correlating salary with happiness: read here. The study says that after a worker earns income of $75,000, the measurable effect on happiness stops.

I’m a New Yorker, and the $75,000 salary used as a yardstick raised my hackles. I immediately wondered whether my friends and colleagues in Nashville TN and Terre Haute IN might live a whole lot better on that money. Yes, it can be said that happiness is a state of mind, but if we are measuring happiness as a function of the material comfort that a salary buys, it’s only fair to level the playing field. Blogger Phil Izzo addressed this disparity in a chart of Happiness Level by Metro Area, and apparently in NYC you require a salary of $163,500 for the same happiness quotient as $75,000 achieves elsewhere. It took the least amount of money to achieve happiness in Fort Smith AK, and Pueblo CO ($62K).

To read the study from which Izzo’s blog was taken, click here. The authors conclude that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being.

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