Money really can buy you happiness — just not at the office, finds new Wharton research.
That’s specifically true for U.S. adults earning up to $200,000 per year, according to an analysis published Thursday by Matt Killingsworth, a senior fellow at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Among that demographic, higher earners are happier in their day-to-day lives, but they’re not any happier at work than people with lower incomes, the analysis says.
The story changes for adults earning more than $200,000 per year, who are generally happier both at work and outside of work than other people, says the analysis, which draws from an ongoing happiness study of over 29,000 employed adults in the United States. Killingsworth has conducted the study since 2009, and people earning more than $200,000 per year account for roughly 3% of its participants.
Killingsworth previously published a research paper in July 2024, based on the same study, suggesting that there’s no limit the correlation between overall happiness and higher incomes. In other words: The more you earn, the happier you’re likely to be, with no point of diminishing returns.
But work itself “is one of the least happy activities” among all the study’s participants, Killingsworth tells CNBC Make It. And higher earners tend to experience increased responsibilities, greater pressure to perform and heavier workloads, he notes.
