Money does buy happiness but how much, depends on where you live
Money can buy happiness but a recent poll shows that how much well-being-income brings depends on the cities you live in.
Income impacts well-being and it affects the way we perceive our day-to-day lives and how we appreciate our cumulative experiences. But a recent Gallup poll, made in partnership with Time Magazine, revealed that is some cities less money can mean more well-being.
According to Gallup, geographically, the differences in the maximum impact that household income has on the chances of experiencing positive emotions vary substantially by region.
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And this could be explained by the fact that the cost of living is more intertwined with our perceived sense of well-being than money is. For example, in the West South Central and West North Central regions, running from Texas northward through the Northern Plains, income’s apparent impact on positive emotions plateaus around $54,000 per year. Beyond this point, ever greater amounts of income yield no greater odds of experiencing positive emotions on any given day.
Outside these regions, to reach the same happiness levels, people need more substantial amounts of cash, double the paycheck, to be exact.
But there are also exceptions which suggest that other factors besides the cost of living, could influence our sense of happiness. People living in the East North Central region around the Great Lakes need $120,000 a year to feel the same amount of positive emotions thou the living cost is not that high.
Gallup and Sharecare, a personal health company, analysed 450,000 interviews with adult Americans, from each 50 states and the District of Columbia, between 2015 and the end of 2016 to see how money influenced our daily emotions.
Looking at 12 metro areas for peak happiness, the Gallup-Share-Time magazine poll shows that while a New Yorker has to earn $105,000 year to reach peak happiness, people living in Phoenix, Miami or Dallas, are just as well off earning about half of that amount. For Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Seattle, the income also has to be of $105,000 a year while in Boston and Houston, happiness costs $75,000 a year.
Getting the most for the least amount of money means moving to Atlanta where happiness peaks at only $42,000.
When it comes to overall well-being, measured not only as income but also as social and community bonds, Gallup found, for the ninth consecutive year, that Americans living in Hawaii, got the highest scores for well-being. Hawaii was followed by Alaska and South Dakota while last on the list was West Virginia.
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