Linch comments on Evidence on correlation between making less than parents and welfare/​happiness?

[Linch]

Hi Jessica,

You might be interested in the latest study which seems to suggest that both life satisfaction and perceived well-being increases proportionally with log(income), though the former has larger correlation than the latter, at least for employed Americans in this large-scale study:

From the paper:

Data are from http://​​trackyourhappiness.org (18), a large-scale project using the experience sampling method (19, 20), in which participants’ smartphones were signaled at randomly timed moments during their waking hours and prompted to answer questions about their experience at the moment just before the signal. The present results are based on 1,725,994 reports of experienced well-being from 33,391 employed (emphasis mine), working-age adults (ages 18 to 65) living in the United States. Experienced well-being was measured with the question “How do you feel right now?” on a continuous response scale with endpoints labeled “Very bad” and “Very good,” while evaluative well-being was measured with the question, “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life?” on a continuous response scale with endpoints labeled “Not at all” and “Extremely.”

[...]

To formally assess whether experienced well-being plateaued around incomes of $75,000/​y, the association between income and experienced well-being was analyzed separately for incomes below and above $80,000/​y (the upper bound of the income band containing $75,000). Results showed that the slope of the association between log(income) and experienced well-being was virtually identical for incomes below and up to $80,000/​y (b = 0.109, P < 0.00001) as it was for incomes larger than $80,000/​y (b = 0.110, P < 0.00001). Although both forms of well-being rose linearly with log(income), the correlation was stronger for evaluative well-being (r = 0.17) than experienced well-being (r = 0.09, P_difference < 0.00001).