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				<div class="et_pb_text_inner">Maybe Money Can Help Buy Happiness, After All</div>
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				<div class="et_pb_text_inner"><p>&nbsp;<br />
Millionaires, rejoice! It turns out that money can, in fact, buy happiness. And a new study suggests more is better, with well-being rising as earnings grow.</p>
<p>&#8220;Having more money gives people a greater sense of control over life,&#8221; said study author Matthew Killingsworth.</p>
<p>The finding stems from more than 1.7 million real-time reports of well-being from more than 33,000 U.S. adults. They were prompted by their cellphones to answer the question &#8220;How do you feel right now?&#8221; at random times during their waking hours.</p>
<p>Previous research had suggested that an annual income of more than $75,000 might not improve people&#8217;s day-to-day lives, and that notion has been widely circulated.</p>
<p>But this study appears to disagree.</p>
<p>Seen from a moment-by-moment angle, Killingsworth said, the data show &#8220;evidence that happiness rises continuously, far above $75,000,&#8221; which means there&#8217;s reason to believe that more money really does improve people&#8217;s lives.</p>
<p>&#8220;If you have more money, you can choose how to spend your time and how to direct your life,&#8221; said Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania&#8217;s Wharton School of Business, in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Stress reduction</p>
<p>This study found that a sense of control accounted for as much as 74% of the apparent link between greater income and greater well-being.</p>
<p>People who earn more spend less time stressing out about bills, Killingsworth noted.</p>
<p>The study found that 44% of low-earners had money problems, compared with 7% among those earning over $500,000, he said.</p>
<p>&#8220;To put it another way: People with low incomes were seven times as likely to report trouble coping with bills,&#8221; Killingsworth explained.</p>
<p>The report was published in the Jan. 26 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.</p>
<p>On average, participants were 33 years old and made about $85,000 per year. About 1% earned $500,000 or more. Just over one-third were married (37%), and about two-thirds were women.</p>
<p>Real-time well-being reports were solicited randomly throughout the day. Participants were also asked how important money was to them; whether they equated money with success; whether they felt in control of their life; and how optimistic, financially insecure, and/or time-pressed they were.</p>
<p>After stacking responses up against income, Killingsworth broadly found that the more money you make, the better you feel day-to-day and the more satisfied you are with life overall.</p>
<p>He found no evidence of a ceiling in the relationship between money and happiness. Above $80,000 a year, larger incomes were associated with significantly higher levels of all positive feelings (confident, good, interested and proud) and significantly lower levels of negative feelings (bored, bad, sad, upset).</p>
<p>So are people on the short end of the economic stick doomed to a less happy existence?</p>
<p>Not necessarily. While wealth matters, it&#8217;s &#8220;far from the most important thing,&#8221; Killingsworth said.</p>
<p>For one thing, while money can afford a sense of control, there&#8217;s always an opportunity to find other ways to achieve the same end, he said. And some people say money just isn&#8217;t that important to them.</p>
<p>&#8220;For those people, happiness is virtually unaffected by how much they earn,&#8221; Killingsworth said. &#8220;So it&#8217;s possible that people who don&#8217;t earn high salaries, but nevertheless craft lives that they enjoy, may find they don&#8217;t actually miss having more money.&#8221;</p>
<p>A complex relationship</p>
<p>The goal, he said, should be to keep money in perspective, because &#8220;people are happiest when they don&#8217;t equate money and success in life.&#8221;</p>
<p>The findings came as little surprise to James Maddux, senior scholar with the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va.</p>
<p>&#8220;Research on the relationship between wealth and happiness, for individuals and nations, has been evolving for decades and has shown that the relationship is complex, as this study again demonstrates,&#8221; Maddux noted.</p>
<p>So Killingsworth&#8217;s finding of a link between higher incomes and life satisfaction &#8220;is not a radical take or an alternative &#8216;school of thought,'&#8221; Maddux said. &#8220;It&#8217;s simply new information about a very complex research question.&#8221;</p>
<p>And given the finding of a strong connection between a sense of control and well-being, Maddux offered some advice.</p>
<p>&#8220;Stop trying to become happier by buying more and more expensive stuff,&#8221; he said, because that&#8217;s the road to debt. &#8220;And debt is detrimental to life satisfaction, partly because it leads to feelings of insecurity and loss of control.&#8221;<br />
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<p>To read the full article, click here.</div>
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