The key to happiness? Start with a £50,000 a year salary, say American scientists

By Fiona Macrae for the Daily Mail
Updated: 12:28 EST, 7 September 2010

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Having it all: £50,000 will buy you happiness as high earners are more satisfied with their lives than their poorer counterparts. (Posed by models)

Money does buy happiness – but only if you earn less than £50,000 a year.

Research shows that feelings of joy and contentment increase along with our salary.

But once we hit the £50,000 mark a pay rise makes little impact on the stresses and strains of everyday life.

The long hours put in by high earners may also leave them with little time to enjoy the fruits of their labours, say the American scientists.

They surveyed 1,000 volunteers about their earnings and their levels of happiness.

They were asked whether they had felt joyful, sad, stressed or angry the previous day and whether they’d smiled or laughed a lot.

Not surprisingly, the lowest earners found life the biggest struggle. But it became easier – and happier – the more an individual earned.

But at $75,000 – around £50,000 at current exchange rates – happiness levelled off. In other words, those earning £100,000 and £150,000 are no more happy than those earning £50,000.

This may be because money can provide only so much cushioning against the pressures of bringing up a family, running a home and holding down a job.

And while a large pay rise initially brings pleasure, the feeling quickly dissipates when the realities of day-to-day life set in.

The Princeton University researchers said: ‘More money does not necessarily buy more happiness but less money is associated with emotional pain.

‘Perhaps $75,000 is a threshold beyond which further increases in income no longer improve a person’s ability to do what matters most to their emotional well-being – such as spending time with the people they like, avoiding pain and disease and enjoying leisure.

‘It is likely that when income increases above this value the increased ability to purchase positive experience is balanced, on average.’

But it is not all bad news. High earners were more satisfied with their life as a whole and the more money they made, the more pleased they were with themselves, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports.

Studies also show that happiness has a lot to do with keeping up with the Joneses.
It seems envy at being lower in the social pecking order tarnishes the satisfaction of being well off.

Dr Chris Boyce, of the University of Warwick, said: ‘Earning £1million a year appears not to be enough to make you happy if you know your friends all earn £2million a year.’