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The Price of Happiness: Money and Emotional Well-Being

Mahak Kumawat · May 2023
Independent Pilot Study
Sitka, Alaska

Does more money make people happier, and is there a point where it stops? A mixed-methods pilot study in Sitka, Alaska, asked 25 people across the town's economic range, and found the sharper answer in what they expected an extra $10,000 to do.

Full Write-Up
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The pilot study write-up: research question, method, and the three findings.

Our approach

The survey ran anonymously with 25 participants: 15 tourists, 5 Sitka residents, 3 Outer Coast faculty and staff, and 2 cruise ship crew members. Each person rated their happiness on Cantril's Ladder and reported annual income and net worth, their own definition of how much money is enough, how much an additional $10,000 would change their well-being, and how they experience financial stress and responsibility.

I analysed the responses with Pearson correlation and regression, and read the open answers alongside the numbers. Dr. Adam Haar Horowitz of the MIT Media Lab advised the design. The study was presented at the 23rd Berea Undergraduate Research Symposium, where I was the only first-year presenter.

What we found

  1. Income and happiness were not significantly related. Across the sample the correlation was R = 0.25, p = 0.25. Two cruise crew members earning about $10,000 a year rated their happiness 9 out of 10, well above the study average of 8.16.
  2. The more people earned, the less they expected more money to help. Salary and the expected impact of an extra $10,000 moved in opposite directions, R = −0.48, p = 0.11. Higher earners tended to describe money as bringing more bills, more expectations, and more problems rather than more well-being.
  3. "Enough" is relative. Lower-income participants set sufficiency at $20,000 to $30,000, others at $75,000 or more. That spread cuts against treating $75,000 as a fixed happiness threshold, since earlier studies did not account for net worth or financial security beyond annual income.

Limitations

  • Twenty-five people is a pilot, not a sample. Neither correlation reaches conventional significance, and the second is a trend to test, not a result.
  • Most respondents were tourists passing through a single town in summer, so the range of income and circumstance is narrower than it looks.
  • Happiness, income, and net worth were all self-reported on the spot.