the 100 thousand euro rule – Corriere.it

Does money bring happiness? What until recently was an unanswered question today seems to have found a scientific solution. Earning more makes you happier. To say it a new neuroscience study published in 2023 in the journal of the National Academy of sciences.

The initial hypotheses

The research was born from the collaboration of two scholars Daniel Kahneman, Nobel prize for economics, and Matt Killingsworth, expert in studies on happiness. The two started from two different theses: for Kahneman the correlation between money and happiness was worth up to the amount of 100 thousand euros, from there on the variables were separate; for Killingsworth, on the other hand, the ceiling of 100,000 did not exist and as the annual income increased (equal to the sum of income and investment returns), the level of happiness always increased. The research they did together proved them both right, highlighting three discoveries about the relationship between money and happiness. The first that the effect of the ceiling of 100,000 euros per year exists but only for the unhappiest 15% of the population. For those experiencing emotional distress, money only produces positive effects up to this amount, after which it becomes insignificant. The second result which, instead from what Kahneman theorized, for 60% of the population, who register average to good levels of happiness, the ceiling effect isnothing: Greater amounts of money available lead to higher levels of happiness.

Who are the super happy

The third discovery concerns the super happy, 25% of the population: high income growth among them produces very intense levels of well-being. According to this study, therefore, for the vast majority of the population (85%), contrary to what has been thought for centuries, the recipe for happiness is money.