If the high cost of living has been getting you down, it turns out you're more than justified in feeling blue. According to a new study, happiness has a dollar figure attached, and (spoiler alert!) it's quite expensive here in Australia.
Researchers have calculated the exact amount of cash you need to be making to be happy while living in different places around the world, and Australia cracked the top three out of 164 nations. That's definitely not a list that we want to be ranking highly on.
Apparently, to be 100 per cent happy Down Under, you need to be making a grand total of $121,191 USD – which equates to about $190,819 in AUD a year. It's an insanely high figure, and it certainly rules out most of us succeeding in the quest to buy happiness, as the median annual income for Aussies is only $52,338 AUD.
There is a method behind the madness of this inflated figure. Currency exchange website S Money used information from a Purdue University study to find the price of happiness in locations across the globe. The study focussed on the relationship between money and happiness, and concluded that a greater income generally improves people’s moods – but only to a certain point, which they refer to as 'income satiation'. Past this tipping point, the correlation between increased satisfaction and increased salary massively dwindles.
It also took data from a Gallup World Poll, which surveyed a representative sample of 1.7 million people worldwide. With this in mind, they calculated how much happiness costs in each place, taking into consideration specific factors like the purchasing power of each country's currency and the local cost of living.
So what other countries are joining us in the economic struggle for satisfaction? Iran topped the list as having the highest annual income required to be happy at $239,700 USD, followed by Yemen at $172,140 USD. Zimbabwe came in fourth at $118,342 USD and Norway in fifth at $117,724 USD. Rounding out the rest of the top ten were Switzerland, New Zealand, Israel, Iceland and the United States.
The top ten is pretty diverse, with a mix of high-earning countries, developing countries and nations suffering the impacts of a poor economy. But interestingly, the countries with the lowest price of happiness weren't those that necessarily had the healthiest economies either, with Sierra Leone coming in as the most affordable country for happiness at only $8,658 USD, followed by Suriname in South America at $10,255 USD and Madagascar at $11,355 USD.
But wait, there's more: S Money also ranked the major cities in each country, and unfortunately, six of Australia's capital cities made it onto the global top 20 list. Brisbane ranked ninth, closely followed by Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide and Perth in the tenth, 11th, 13th and 14th spots, respectively – ouch. Melbourne came in 17th place, which is a little surprising as you'd assume it would be more expensive here compared to some of our smaller interstate counterpart cities. Either way, life is still pretty bloody expensive.
But it's not all bad news. Studies suggest there's a much stronger correlation between happiness and how people spend their money, rather than how much they have. Research from Harvard University shows that our social relationships are a much better determinant of our happiness, and luckily, friendship is free! So the next time you're feeling sad about cozzie livs, the best thing you can do is phone a friend – and then you can gripe about how expensive things are, together. How wholesome.