Princeton Study Finds $75,000 Enough To Buy Happiness

So reports Time magazine:

People say money doesn’t buy happiness. Except, according to a new study from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, it sort of does – up to about $75,000 a year. The lower a person’s annual income falls below that benchmark, the unhappier he or she feels. But no matter how much more than $75,000 people make, they don’t report any greater degree of happiness.
Before employers rush to hold – or raise – everyone’s salary to $75,000, the study points out that there are actually two types of happiness. There’s your changeable, day-to-day mood: whether you’re stressed or blue or feeling emotionally sound. Then there’s the deeper satisfaction you feel about the way your life is going – the kind of thing Tony Robbins tries to teach you. While having an income above the magic $75,000 cutoff doesn’t seem to have an impact on the former (emotional well-being), it definitely improves people’s Robbins-like life satisfaction. In other words, the more people make above $75,000, the more they feel their life is working out on the whole. But it doesn’t make them any more jovial in the mornings.

Update: To put this in context, one of my producers points out that the median household income in Rhode Island was $55,701 in 2008 (the most recent year for which figures are available), according to the U.S. Census Bureau. No state had median income of $75,000 or more, although Maryland and New Jersey came closest, each at just above $70,000.