A new report found out that having more money does indeed lead to being happier in your life.
It turns out that saying was wrong eh.
The Expanding Class Divide in Happiness into the United States, 1972—2016, published last week in the journal Emotion, found out that people age 30 years old and older believe that having more money does lead to more happiness.
The study used data from the General Social Survey, which is one of the longest-running nationally representative surveys of U.S. adults, with having 44,198 participants from the years 1972 and 2016.
The study found a growing class divided into happiness.
The happiness of whites with no college education saw a steady decline since 1972, while the happiness of whites with college education stayed steady.
For African Americans, the results were different.
Happiness levels of blacks with no college education stayed steady since 1972, while the happiness of blacks that have college education has increased.
For both races in the United States of America, the happiness gap with education saw growth.
The findings challenged the “Money can’t buy happiness” adage, which had been supported by other studies.
The “Money can’t buy happiness” adage has been cited by a 2010 Princeton University report showing that at levels higher than $75,000, a rise in income is not associated with greater happiness.
The General Social Survey (GSS) did not ask the same questions that were asked in the Princeton study.
In the Princeton study, the researchers asked how participants felt the previous day and whether if they were living the best possible life for themselves.
This time, the General Social Survey (GSS) asked:
Taken all together, how would you say things are these days? Would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?
The new study divided respondents into quintiles and deciles on the basis of income and how they answered the question.
Adults over the age of 30 that were present in the top decile of inflation-adjusted house income of $108,410 and higher were 5 percent likely to say that they were happier than people that were in the ninth decile.
The new study by General Social Survey found no evidence that happiness tapers off after a certain income point.
Jean Twenge, the paper’s lead author, told The Washington Post:
The link [between income and happiness] is stronger now than in previous decades.
She also said that the decrease of happiness among lower-income people can be a result of rising inequality, increasing real estate values and decreased ability to pay for education.
She added:
What you tell your kids when you have income inequality is, ‘You either make it or you don’t, so you’d better make it’.
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