Money and life: what your income says about your footprint, health and happiness

Your carbon footprint follows your income

The richest 10% of the world’s people cause almost half of all carbon emissions; the poorest half cause about 12%. Average emissions per person, per year, by global income group in 2019:

1. Poorest half1.6 t
2. Middle 40%^*6.6 t
3. Next 9%^*22.2 t
4. Richest 1%110 t

Enter your income to see which group you belong to.

Tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per person, including emissions from investments for the richest groups. Source: Chancel (2022). *Middle 40% and next 9% are derived from the published totals. Groups are by income at purchasing power parity; the calculator ranks at market exchange rates, so your group is an approximation near the boundaries.

Does more money make you happier?

For most people, yes, and there is no clear point where it stops. In 2010 Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton found that day-to-day happiness levelled off at about $75,000 a year in the United States (source). Matthew Killingsworth then tracked moment-to-moment feelings of more than 33,000 working Americans and found happiness kept rising with income, with no plateau (source).

In 2023 the two sides tested their disagreement together. The answer: for most people, happiness keeps rising with income, roughly as much for each doubling. Only the least happy 15–20% stop gaining at about $100,000 a year: their unhappiness comes from things money cannot fix (source).

• Below $100,000 More income goes with more happiness for almost everyone.
• Above $100,000 Still rising for most; flat for the least happy group.
• Each doubling Roughly the same gain at every level, so a raise from $50,000 to $100,000 counts about as much as one from $250,000 to $500,000.

The richest live up to 14 years longer

Life expectancy at age 40 for the poorest 1% and the richest 1% by household income. For men the gap is almost as large in Norway, with free health care, as in the United States.

1. United States, men72.7 → 87.3+14.6 yrs
2. United States, women78.8 → 88.9+10.1 yrs
3. Norway, men70.6 → 84.5+13.9 yrs
4. Norway, women78 → 86.4+8.4 yrs

The gain is not only at the extremes. In the US, every step up the income ladder adds life expectancy: moving from the 90th to the 95th percentile adds almost a year, as does moving from the 10th to the 15th. Between 2001 and 2014 the richest 5% of American men gained 2.3 years of life expectancy, the poorest 5% just 0.3 (Chetty et al.; Kinge et al.).

Expected age at death for people alive at 40. United States 2001–2014 (tax records, 1.4 billion person-years); Norway 2005–2015 (population registers).

Many reach the top, few stay there

Following Americans from age 25 to 60, researchers found that most spend at least one year in the top 20% of incomes, and one in nine reaches the top 1%:

1. Top 20%70%
2. Top 10%53%
3. Top 1%11%

Staying is harder. Only 0.6% of Americans are in the top 1% for ten years in a row (Hirschl and Rank). Moving up across generations has also become harder: 90% of Americans born in 1940 came to earn more than their parents, but only half of those born in the 1980s (Chetty et al.). Once you have wealth, it tends to grow faster: Norwegian tax records show that moving from the 10th to the 90th percentile of wealth raises the yearly return on it by about 18 percentage points before tax (Fagereng et al.).

How long would it take you? Try the path to the top.