I work in this area and I really dislike it when happiness is plotted against income only on a log scale, as is done here. The log scale effectively conceals the flattening-out of the relationship, which is the thing that shows you how progressive taxation + redistribution make the average person better off.
Whether it's a straight line up to $75K followed by a flat line from there on, or a curved (log) relationship all the way up, seems to me to make rather little difference.
Fig 2 of [1] shows high variance of happiness while income variation has only a small effect. There is roughly a 5 % (percent it is?) happiness delta for an income delta of about $ 500.000. However, the happiness delta between the different happiness levels is about 25 %.
Would “Income and emotional well-being: It doesn’t really matter” be a better title for the study? Or do I miss something?
gmac|2 years ago
Whether it's a straight line up to $75K followed by a flat line from there on, or a curved (log) relationship all the way up, seems to me to make rather little difference.
klft|2 years ago
Would “Income and emotional well-being: It doesn’t really matter” be a better title for the study? Or do I miss something?
[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120#fig02