As suspected, to be rich is glorious

Now that the grandest wedding in the history of weddings is done and dusted - or is it? - and many are feeling blue (no, not the Microsoft kind) about the utter void in their social media feeds, let's get back to a fundamental question: can money buy happiness?

While the Beatles had a consensus on this - 'I don't care too much for money/ Money can't buy me love,' sang the by-then very rich quartet - scientists are still scratching their heads (and spending serious amounts of cash) to figure it out. The latest research is by Wharton's Matt Killingsworth.

While tracking happiness for his larger research, trackyourhappiness.org, he sampled 33,269 employed US adults aged 18-65 with household incomes of at least $10,000 a year, who answered questions on a scale called 'Satisfaction with life', along with data from the ultra-wealthy - folks with a median net worth between $3 mn and $7.9 mn.


He found the super-rich were 'substantially and statistically' - in other words, significantly - happier than people earning over $500k a year.

So, why might rich people be happier? Killingsworth says it's 'more fundamental and psychologically deeper than simply buying more stuff'. It's about having a greater feeling of control over life. In effect, they have more freedom to live the life they want to live. Much like a hermit or bum, actually.