Sources · Money and the good life
This house believes money buys a good life.
Fact bank v1 · 13 cards
This is a philosophy motion, so the judge never rules either side's view true or false. These cards say what philosophers generally accept, and cover facts such as who argued what.
- MGL-01
“Once you earn about $75,000 a year, more money stops making you any happier.”
What philosophers generally accept
For most people, happiness keeps rising as income goes up, well past $75,000. A 2023 study found that only the least happy group, about 15 to 20% of people, stopped getting happier, at around $100,000 a year.
The $75,000 figure comes from a famous 2010 study of US survey answers by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton. It found that people's rating of their life kept rising with income, but everyday happiness levelled off at about $75,000. A 2021 study by Matthew Killingsworth, using 1,725,994 mood reports from 33,391 US workers, found no levelling off. In 2023 the two sides worked on the question together and found both were partly right. For happier people, happiness kept rising with income, and for the happiest group it rose even faster above $100,000. These studies show links between income and happiness, not proof that money causes it.
“A reanalysis of Killingsworth's experienced sampling data confirmed the flattening pattern only for the least happy people.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (abstract via PubMed, US National Library of Medicine)·Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)Government / parliament · 1 Mar 2023 ↗Further sources for this card
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (full text via PubMed Central, US National Library of Medicine) · Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved (Killingsworth, Kahneman and Mellers, 2023) ↗
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (abstract via PubMed, US National Library of Medicine) · Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year (Killingsworth, 2021) ↗
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (abstract via PubMed, US National Library of Medicine) · High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being (Kahneman and Deaton, 2010) ↗
- MGL-02
“Richer people are more satisfied with their lives.”
What philosophers generally accept
Confirmed: a study of more than 450,000 answers to a daily US Gallup survey found that people's rating of their own life rose steadily as their income rose.
Researchers split well-being into two parts: how you rate your life when you stop and think about it, and how you feel day to day. Income was more closely linked to the first. Health, caring for others, loneliness and smoking were stronger predictors of daily feelings. Low income also made bad events, such as divorce, ill health and being alone, hurt more. A 2013 study of rich and poor countries, and of rich and poor people within a country, found no income level where well-being stops rising. The rise is steady for each doubling of income, not each extra dollar, so the same extra money means more to a poorer person. This is a link, not proof that money is the cause.
“When plotted against log income, life evaluation rises steadily.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (abstract via PubMed, US National Library of Medicine)·High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)Government / parliament · 7 Sept 2010 ↗ - MGL-03
“Lottery winners end up no happier than before, or even more miserable.”
What philosophers generally accept
A large study of 3,362 Swedish lottery players found that big winners were more satisfied with their lives, and the boost lasted more than 10 years without fading. Their everyday happiness and mental health changed much less, too little to be sure of any effect.
A famous 1978 study compared just 22 Illinois lottery winners with 22 people from the same areas who had not won, and found no clear difference in happiness. The Swedish study asked players about their lives 5 to 22 years after their win. Because chance decided who won how much, it is a fair test of what money does. Each $100,000 won gave only a small rise in life satisfaction, and most of it came from people feeling better about their money. So a big win helps how people rate their life, but it is not a magic fix.
“large-prize winners experience sustained increases in overall life satisfaction that persist for over a decade and show no evidence of dissipating with time”
National Bureau of Economic Research·Long-run Effects of Lottery Wealth on Psychological Well-being (NBER Working Paper 24667; published in The Review of Economic Studies, 2020)Independent research institute · 1 May 2018 ↗ - MGL-04
“Rich people live longer than poor people.”
What philosophers generally accept
Confirmed for the US: using 1.4 billion tax records, researchers found that at age 40 the richest 1% of men could expect to live 14.6 years longer than the poorest 1%. For women the gap was 10.1 years.
Higher income went with longer life all the way up the income ladder, not just at the very top and bottom. The gap also grew between 2001 and 2014. Life expectancy in the top 5% rose by 2.34 years for men and 2.91 years for women, but in the bottom 5% by only 0.32 years for men and 0.04 years for women. Poorer people lived longer in some US places than in others, and this went along with health habits such as smoking, not with access to medical care. The study shows a link; it does not prove that money alone makes people live longer.
“higher income was associated with greater longevity throughout the income distribution”
JAMA (abstract via PubMed, US National Library of Medicine)·The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014 (JAMA)Government / parliament · 26 Apr 2016 ↗ - MGL-05
“Giving cash to people in poor countries makes them happier.”
What philosophers generally accept
Confirmed: a review of 45 studies covering 116,999 people in low- and middle-income countries found that cash payments gave a small but real boost to well-being and mental health, measured about two years later on average.
The boost was small, so cash alone is not a cure-all. Bigger payments led to bigger effects, both in dollars and compared with what people earned before. The authors also point to other research showing that cash helps health and income, and they conclude that there is evidence cash transfers improve lives.
“After an average follow-up time of two years, we find that CTs have a small but statistically significant positive effect on both SWB”
Nature Human Behaviour·A systematic review and meta-analysis of the impact of cash transfers on subjective well-being and mental health in low- and middle-income countries (Nature Human Behaviour)Peer-reviewed research · 20 Jan 2022 ↗ - MGL-06
“Spending money on other people makes you happier than spending it on yourself.”
What philosophers generally accept
Mostly right, but the effect can be small. Large repeat studies in 2020 backed the idea overall, but in one test with 1,950 adults there was no difference, and in another with 5,199 people the difference was small.
The idea comes from a 2008 study in the journal Science. People who spent more of their income on others were happier, and people told to spend money on others felt happier than people told to spend it on themselves. Most early studies were small, so the same researchers repeated them with far more people. With 712 students, buying something for a stranger in need beat buying something for yourself. Overall the evidence supports the idea, but how big the effect looks depends on how the study is done. It also suggests that how you spend money matters, not just how much you have.
“these studies support the hypothesis that spending money on others does promote happiness”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (abstract via PubMed, US National Library of Medicine)·Does spending money on others promote happiness?: A registered replication report (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)Government / parliament · 6 Apr 2020 ↗ - MGL-07
“Countries don't get any happier as they get richer.”
What philosophers generally accept
Experts disagree. Economist Richard Easterlin's team found that over 10 years or more, happiness did not rise as a country's income grew, in rich countries, poorer countries and eastern European countries that moved from socialism to capitalism. Other economists found that richer countries are happier on average, and that economic growth goes along with rising happiness.
Easterlin's team agrees that in the short run, happiness rises when the economy grows and falls when it shrinks. The argument is about the long run. Easterlin says studies that find a long-run link mix up those short-term ups and downs with the long-term trend. Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers found no point where richer countries stop getting happier. Our World in Data says growth and happiness tend to go together on average, but some countries grow richer without getting happier, and the US in recent decades is one example.
“happiness does not increase as a country's income rises”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (abstract via PubMed, US National Library of Medicine)·The happiness-income paradox revisited (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)Government / parliament · 13 Dec 2010 ↗ - MGL-08
“People only care about having more money than the people around them, not about how much they actually have.”
What philosophers generally accept
Comparing yourself with others does matter, but it is not the whole story. One study compared people with the same income and found that those whose neighbours earned more said they were less happy. But a large study of many countries found that the money people actually have plays a clear role, and comparing with others a more limited one.
This is sometimes called keeping up with the Joneses. The neighbours study followed the same people over time, and the author says there is some evidence that the link comes from people caring about how their spending compares with other people's. Stevenson and Wolfers found that the link between income and happiness across countries looks much like the link within a single country, which points to money itself mattering, not just rank. So both how much you have and how you compare seem to count.
“controlling for an individual's own income, higher earnings of neighbors are associated with lower levels of self-reported happiness”
National Bureau of Economic Research·Neighbors as Negatives: Relative Earnings and Well-Being (NBER Working Paper 10667; published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2005)Independent research institute · 1 Aug 2004 ↗ - MGL-09
“People who care most about money and possessions tend to be less happy.”
What philosophers generally accept
Confirmed: a 2014 review of 753 results from 259 separate groups of people found that more materialistic people had lower well-being on average.
The link is small to moderate. It was weaker in studies that only measured how much people care about money than in studies that measured wider materialistic values and beliefs. It was weakest for life satisfaction, and strongest for risky health and spending habits and for feeling bad about yourself. This is about what people value, not how much money they have. It does not prove that materialism causes unhappiness. The authors suggest the link may be because materialistic people get their basic emotional needs met less well.
“Materialism was associated with significantly lower well-being for the most widely used, multifaceted measures”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (abstract via PubMed, US National Library of Medicine)·The relationship between materialism and personal well-being: A meta-analysis (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)Government / parliament · 1 Nov 2014 ↗ - MGL-10
“Strong relationships matter as much for a long life as not smoking.”
What philosophers generally accept
Roughly right. A review of 148 studies with 308,849 people found that those with stronger social relationships had 50% higher odds of still being alive during the studies. The authors said this effect is comparable with quitting smoking.
People were followed for 7.5 years on average. The 50% is about the odds of being alive during that time, not about living 50% longer. The link was strongest for broad measures of how connected people were, and weakest for simply living alone or with others. The authors found the effect was bigger than for obesity or lack of exercise. Cause and effect are hard to prove here: illness can shrink people's social lives, and nobody can be randomly made lonely for a study.
“The magnitude of this effect is comparable with quitting smoking and it exceeds many well-known risk factors for mortality (e.g., obesity, physical inactivity).”
PLOS Medicine·Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review (PLOS Medicine)Peer-reviewed research · 27 Jul 2010 ↗ - MGL-11
“Aristotle taught that money has nothing to do with living a good life.”
What philosophers generally accept
Aristotle said wealth is not what a good life is made of, but he also said that to be happy you need some outside goods as well, such as friends, wealth and power.
For Aristotle, the best life (eudaimonia, often translated as happiness or flourishing) is a lifetime of acting well, using reason and good character. Health, wealth and similar things are wanted because they help you live well, not because they are what living well is. He said that not having enough of these outside goods gets in the way of acting well. He also criticised trying to grab as much wealth and power as you can, because it sets people against each other and harms the community. A good person will give up money to do fine things, but that does not mean people can do without money.
“Aristotle makes it clear that in order to be happy one must possess others goods as well—such goods as friends, wealth, and power.”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy·Aristotle's Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Peer-reviewed research · 11 Aug 2026 ↗Further sources for this card
- MGL-12
“The Stoics taught that wealth is a bad thing.”
What philosophers generally accept
The Stoics said wealth is neither good nor bad. They called it indifferent to happiness, because only good character (virtue) makes a life happy. But the main Stoic view was also that wealth has value, and that in normal times it is right to choose it over poverty.
This was the view of the main Stoic school, whose later writers include Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. For them, having or losing money never makes your life better or worse, because only virtue does that. So a good person would sensibly aim for health and wealth rather than illness and poverty, but would be just as happy without them. Critics in ancient times said this was confusing: why work for something that makes no difference to your happiness?
“in no case is a human life ever made better or worse by the possession or deprivation of wealth”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy·Stoicism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Peer-reviewed research · 20 Jan 2023 ↗ - MGL-13
“Having more money makes a big difference to how happy you feel day to day.”
What philosophers generally accept
Money and everyday happiness are linked, but only weakly. In a 2023 study of mood reports from 33,391 US workers, the typical person in a household earning $250,000 a year was only about 5 points happier, on a 100-point scale, than the typical person in a household earning $15,000.
The researchers call the link weak, even though it shows up clearly in the data. But other parts of life also make only small differences to everyday mood. An earlier study found that having about four times the income made about as much difference as a weekend does, twice as much as being married, and less than a third as much as having a headache. Money is more closely linked to how people rate their life overall, when they stop and think about it, than to how they feel from moment to moment.
“the difference between the medians of happiness at household incomes of $15,000 and $250,000 is about five points on a 100-point scale”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (full text via PubMed Central, US National Library of Medicine)·Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)Government / parliament · 1 Mar 2023 ↗
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