Most people reading this will never feel extreme hunger and have all their material needs met forever, but they will probably also go through things that to them, feel like miserable failures.
You might even be forced to leave your cushy jobs and take an annual salary that is what 50 African laborers make in year. And it will possibly take years, maybe well over a decade, to live down how bad you feel about yourself.
Whether you're scrambling around the forest looking for berries and killing things to eat with pointy sticks or working an office job living in a suburb – I don't really think your emotional experience really changes all that much.
I think your misery and delight are driven by the best and worst things in your life and it doesn't really matter all that much what your circumstances are. When things get better you find new things to be miserable about, when things get worse you stop caring about the little things and your misery is driven by the new worst thing.
I don't see standard of living really driving all that much happiness. Maybe some, but much less than I think most people expect.
Happiness is definitely a hockey-stick shaped curve, going from 1M to 10M is not going to make you happier, but someone who is making $100k is going to be far far happier than someone making $20k. The difference between scrabbling to pay your bills and keep the heat on, vs actually having some savings and free money for recreation, is absolutely massive.
To be fair, making $20k was almost always a choice in those cases.
I guess if you're willing to sacrifice some things it could work. You're definitely not raising a family of 3-4 in a nicer neighborhood with that amount.
We're all pretty bad at knowing what will make us happy in advance.
With kids, the cheaper areas have generally worse schools, parks, etc.
Having an income of 20k/year in US puts you at like 16th percentile.
That is assuming your status is above subsistence level in your society.
I don't think there is one correct answer to the question of how much money you have to have to live, because it's mostly about your biggest expense, imo. Everything else you can economize on to an extreme if you have to, if you're healthy and sane and frugal.
Once you start talking about a "nice" neighborhood, you're talking about a competitive zero-sum game where the costs can increase without limit.
The neighborhood they were living in was generally fairly average, everything considered. But only one of them had one kid (also single parent though).
Not in a large city. But I’m fairly sure in that case the main downgrade would be the neighborhood.
A lot of people are happy in college and they're almost all living on less than $24k a year despite working over 40h a week (although schoolwork is a lot more engaging than industry IMHO).
I can say I was very happy with minimal income in my university years, but would not be anymore as my friends are out of the campus and getting forward with their lives.
This is what causes people in the West who earn $35k and $350k alike to feel 'poor' despite the fact that even the former income is already in the global 99th percentile.
And in fact it isn’t specifically a choice. Sure you can make choices that, over a long term, will boost your income but it’s rarely a choice.
On average people making $80k are happier than those making $20k, to a greater degree than when comparing $10M to $1M.
- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
I think there are a few key things that drive happiness. Secure food and shelter. Short commute. Nature. Being able to walk away from toxic jobs and relationships.
Treating animals fairly lead to happier animals.
Transform your puppy in an spoiled human baby clothed in expensive ribbons or giving vegan food to your cat will not make it happier necessarily (not to mention the neutering clause in the small letter of the contract). Our definitions of better can difer from theirs.