Money, happiness and the connection between the two 

At the turn of the century, a friend, an India cricketer, told me, “If you can make around eight and a half lakh rupees a year, you can be happy.” That’s about 22 lakh today. 

At the turn of the century, a friend, an India cricketer, told me, “If you can make around eight and a half lakh rupees a year, you can be happy.” That’s about 22 lakh today. 

Having been told virtually from the cradle that money can’t buy happiness, I found his choice of words interesting (he was a batter, do bowlers have a different viewpoint?). Those who don’t have a lot of it, I figured, are the ones who console themselves with the thought that the rich are never happy. The happy, of course, are always rich. 

Back in 2010, the Nobel Prize winning behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman led a famous study which concluded that happiness increases with income until it plateaus at $75,000 a year. Beyond that, more money does not equal more happiness. 

Perhaps it is with the staff’s best interests at heart therefore that employers pay them less than they are worth. Why encourage the levelling off of happiness through large wages? 

The survey involved about half a million Americans, and may not be relevant to Papua New Guinea, for example. The figure will be different for India too. But the idea that you could place a price on happiness was interesting. 

However, the essential question remains: why struggle, save and invest beyond the magic figure? If you ever get to it, that is. It is roughly 91 lakh rupees a year today, adjusting for inflation. Luckily for our back-breaking selves, a Wharton researcher, Matthew Killingsworth found in 2021 that more money does indeed buy more happiness. He concluded that the positive connection “continues far up the economic ladder.” 

I love research that come to contradictory conclusions and may be used depending on your temperament (and salary level).