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A recent study examines the annual income individuals need to feel personally happy, and it maps that figure across different regions of the world. The design of the question is itself a stance.
If the number varies by geography, then every global benchmark built on a universal income-wellbeing threshold has been measuring something other than what it claimed.
What the regional frame does to the debate Income and happiness have a long and contested relationship in economic research.
The interesting question has rarely been whether money matters to wellbeing (it does, at low levels, almost everywhere) but whether it keeps mattering as income rises, and whether the answer is the same in different parts of the world.
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