Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2016976118.abstract
What is the relationship between money and well-being?
Research distinguishes between two forms of well-being: people’s feelings during the moments of life (experienced well-being) and people’s evaluation of their lives when they pause and reflect (evaluative well-being).
Drawing on 1,725,994 experience-sampling reports from 33,391 employed US adults, the present results show that both experienced and evaluative well-being increased linearly with log(income), with an equally steep slope for higher earners as for lower earners.
There was no evidence for an experienced well-being plateau above $75,000/y, contrary to some influential past research.
There was also no evidence of an income threshold at which experienced and evaluative well-being diverged, suggesting that higher incomes are associated with both feeling better day-to-day and being more satisfied with life overall.