Once your income hits $75,000, have you hit the peak salary for happiness?
如果你的收入达到7.5万美元，这就是能让幸福感最大化的薪资水平吗？
Not quite.
不尽然。
The oft-cited $75,000 figure – now about $110,000 in today’s dollars – comes from a 2010 study by two Nobel laureates that made the crossover from academia to personal-finance meme. More recent research suggests that there may be no household income at which happiness peaks, and that our money might influence our emotions well beyond that threshold.
7.5万美元（按今天的美元价值计算大约为11万美元）这个被经常引用的数字出自两位诺贝尔奖得主在2010年的一项横跨学术界和个人理财领域的研究。而最近的研究则表明，让幸福感达到顶峰的家庭收入数字可能不存在，而且在远超过7.5万美元这个数字之后，我们拥有金钱的多少对自身情绪仍有影响。
There may be something like happiness tax brackets: Just as your take-home pay becomes a smaller and smaller share of your earnings as you move up the income ladder, so does your take-home joy.
说到幸福感，可能存在某种类似于税收等级的东西：随着你收入逐级升高，你的实得工资在你收入中所占的比例就越来越小，而你的实得快乐也是如此。
“It would be absolutely wrong to reduce the pursuit of happiness to the pursuit of money,” said Matt Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “At the same time, it would also be wrong to totally discard money as a meaningful factor.”
“将对幸福的追求简化为对金钱的追求是绝对错误的，”宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院（University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School）高级研究员马特·基林斯沃思（Matt Killingsworth）表示。“与此同时，完全摒弃金钱这个重要因素也是错误的。”
Like the 10,000-hour rule popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, the science behind $75,000 was more nuanced than the version that got lodged in people’s heads. The figure stuck because it was easy to grasp and tapped into anxieties about the pursuit of money.
就像是被马尔科姆·格拉德威尔（Malcolm Gladwell）普及的一万小时法则，7.5万美元背后的科学原理比人们想象的版本更加微妙。这个数字之所以被保留下来，是因为它很容易理解，也容易激发人们对追求金钱的焦虑。
It was also wrong, some researchers say.
一些研究人员表示，这也是错误的。
Much of the current thinking on this debate can’t be summed up in a single number, but rather 10 words: Money buys happiness. With diminishing returns. And no magic number.
当前关于这场辩论的大部分想法不能用一个数字来总结，而要用三句话来概括：金钱可以买到幸福。边际效用递减规律适用于收入带来的幸福感。不存在魔法数字。
Money buys happiness
金钱可以买到幸福
People with higher incomes tend to be happier day-to-day and overall, numerous studies of Americans have found.
针对美国人的大量研究表明，从日常和总体情况来看，收入更高的人往往更快乐。
The $75,000 number, based on more than 450,000 Americans’ responses to a Gallup survey, applied solely to day-to-day mood. People’s overall life evaluation was higher at household incomes above $120,000 than just below it, the original study found.
根据盖洛普对逾45万名美国人进行的一项调查，7.5万美元这一数字仅适用于日常情绪。这项原始研究发现，家庭收入高于12万美元的人们对生活的整体评价要高于收入低于这个水平的人们。
Later studies have called the $75,000 figure into question. In 2021, Killingsworth used data measuring more gradations of happiness than the original paper and found that day-to-day moods continued to improve past $75,000 in 2010 dollars.
后来的研究对7.5万美元这一数字提出了质疑。2021年，基林斯沃思用数据衡量了比原始论文更多的幸福等级，发现当收入超过7.5万美元（按照2010年的美元价值计算）后，人们的日常情绪继续改善。
He then collaborated with the late Daniel Kahneman, one of the 2010 paper’s co-authors. They ended up agreeing that Killingsworth’s 2021 finding was right.
然后，他与2010年这篇论文的合著者之一、现已去世的学者丹尼尔·可卡尼曼（Daniel Kahneman）合作。他们最终一致认为，基林斯沃思在2021年的研究发现是正确的。
Getting more money causes people to be happier with their lives, other studies show. A 2020 paper in the Review of Economic Studies looked at lottery winners in Sweden and found that the boost was still observable more than a decade later.
其他研究表明，拥有更多的金钱会让人们感觉生活更幸福。2020年发表在《经济研究评论》（Review of Economic Studies）上的一篇论文研究了瑞典的彩票中奖者，发现金钱对幸福感的提升作用在十多年后依然可见。
The relationship between money and happiness is clear, but not simple.
金钱和幸福之间的关系很明显，但并不简单。
One nuance is that money matters for happiness, but not enormously. Since most people live in a fairly narrow band of the happiness spectrum, big increases in income are generally needed to produce the most substantial increases in happiness.
其中一个微妙之处是，金钱对幸福很重要，但又不是那么重要。由于大多数人生活在一个相当狭窄的幸福感区间内，通常需要收入大幅增长才能实现幸福感的显著提升。
Second, researchers haven’t nailed down precisely why more money is associated with more happiness. Killingsworth’s leading explanation: It isn’t what the money buys, but the choices it affords.
其次，研究人员尚未确切阐明为什么更多的金钱与更强的幸福感相关。比较主流的是基林斯沃思的解释：重要的不是钱能买到什么，而是钱能提供的选择。
Happiness itself is also linked to people’s finances. Those who reported higher happiness as adolescents went on to make more money around age 30, even after accounting for their socioeconomic background, according to a 2012 study in PNAS.
幸福感本身也和人们的财务状况有关。根据《国家科学院学报》（PNAS）在2012年的一项研究，那些在青少年时期有较高幸福感的人在30岁左右可以赚到更多的钱，即使将他们的社会经济背景考虑在内也是如此。
With diminishing returns
边际效用递减规律
As your income increases, each dollar makes less of a difference to your happiness.
随着你收入的增加，多赚的每一块钱对你幸福感的影响越来越小。
The effect of a raise on one’s happiness is more about the percentage change than the dollar amount. If your pay doubled from $50,000 to $100,000, it typically would need to double again to $200,000 to generate an equivalent happiness boost, according to the work of Killingsworth and others.
加薪对一个人幸福感的影响更多是通过百分比变化而不是具体金额。根据基林斯沃思等人的研究，如果你的工资从5万美元翻倍至10万美元，通常需要再翻一倍达到20万美元，才能让幸福感有同种程度的增加。
Amy Grable used to stress about having enough in her bank account to cover everyday transactions. But her financial worries subsided as her income rose from roughly $65,000 to $100,000 over the past six years. She paid down some of her student debt and bought a house.
艾米·格拉布尔（Amy Grable）过去总是压力很大，担心账户里没有足够的钱来支付日常开销。但是，随着她的收入在过去六年里从大约6.5万美元增加到10万美元，她的财务忧虑逐渐减轻。她偿还了部分学生贷款，还买了房子。
The 42-year-old product manager in Oregon City, Ore., said she doesn’t fantasize about leaping to the next pay tier, in part because the shift she has already experienced, from instability to stability, feels more consequential.
这位来自俄勒冈州俄勒冈市的42岁产品经理说，她并不幻想跃升到更高的薪酬等级，部分原因是她已经经历过从不稳定到稳定的跃迁，这种变化本身感觉更为重要。
“Where I’m at right now feels perfect,” she said.
“我现在的收入水平感觉很完美，”她说。
And then there are those for whom a raise won’t do much. In Killingsworth and Kahneman’s 2023 paper, happiness stopped rising at incomes above $100,000 for some groups, while it actually started rising faster for other ones.
还有一些人，加薪对他们来说没有太大作用。基林斯沃思和卡尼曼在2023年的论文中指出，对某些群体来说，收入在超过10万美元以后幸福感就不再上升，而对另一些群体来说，幸福感则会加速上升。
“For some people, money just matters more than others,” Killingsworth said. He is currently studying what other traits might predict those differences.
“对某些人来说，金钱就是比较重要，”基林斯沃思说。他目前正在研究还有哪些其他特征可以预测这些差异。
Numbers, but no magic
没有什么魔法数字
There is no magic number – especially not $75,000 – that researchers agree on as a point where happiness stops rising with income.
有人认为，收入一旦达到某个点，幸福感就会停止上升，其实并不存在研究人员一致认同的魔法数字，尤其不会是7.5万美元。
Some studies, such as those by Killingsworth, find that there is no such point, or at least they haven’t found it in the available data. Perhaps it exists at an income level that there aren’t enough data points for, such as $1 million or more.
一些研究（比如基林斯沃思的研究）发现，并不存在这样的一个点，或者说至少他们在现有数据中没有发现这个点。也许它存在于没有足够数据支持的收入阶层中，比如100万美元或更高水平。
“It’s very hard to do work on the very rich,” said Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan. “There’s not many of them and they don’t like to answer surveys.”
“针对非常富裕的人群做研究非常困难，”密歇根大学（University of Michigan）的经济学家贾斯廷·沃尔弗斯（Justin Wolfers）表示。“这个群体的数量不是很大，而且他们不喜欢回答调查问卷。”
Other researchers say that beyond a certain level of pay, happiness effectively plateaus.
其他研究人员则表示，薪资超过一定水平，幸福感实际上会趋于稳定。
Even if there continued to be a subtle boost in happiness, “it’d be so tiny it’d be meaningless,” said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, an economics professor at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford who studies well-being.
即便幸福感还能有不易察觉的提升，“幅度也会很小，几乎毫无意义，”牛津大学赛德商学院（Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford）研究幸福感的经济学教授扬-伊曼纽尔·德内夫（Jan-Emmanuel De Neve）指出。
Still, the idea of a salary for maximum happiness is appealing.
尽管如此，有关最高幸福感薪酬的想法仍然很有吸引力。
Angus Deaton, the other author of the 2010 study and a Nobel laureate, said he thinks that part of the popularity of the $75,000 figure was that it seemed within reach for many people.
2010年那项研究的另一名作者、诺贝尔奖得主安格斯·迪顿（Angus Deaton）表示，他认为7.5万美元这个数字之所以被经常引用，部分原因在于它对许多人来说似乎够得到。
“Perhaps people like to think that the very rich don’t get that much out of it,” he said.
“也许人们喜欢这么想——非常有钱的人也不会因此得到太多快乐，”他说。
