Money can buy happiness, researchers say. They even put a price on it for Canadians

Common wisdom says that money can’t buy happiness. But if it could, researchers say, it would cost $155,850, making Canada the 14th most expensive nation in the world to purchase joy.

The slightly tongue-in-cheek study was produced by digital financial services provider Remitly, but based on an actual scientific paper published in 2018 by Purdue University, “adjusted to account for local purchasing power and inflation.”

“To determine each city and country’s price of happiness, Remitly reverse-engineered figures obtained from Purdue University’s study into the relationship between happiness and income,” the report says.

It also used Gallup’s Life Evaluation Index , a poll that measures happiness around the world.

“The satiation point of LE (life evaluation) refers to the income point at which any further increase has no effect on an individual’s happiness,” they wrote. “So, to discover the local price of happiness by country, they converted these figures back to local currencies using country-specific Purchasing Power Ratios sourced from the International Monetary Fund.”

Finally, the team converted local currencies into U.S. dollars, for comparison purposes.

The winner (or loser, if you want to put it that way) was Iceland, where happiness costs a whopping US$163,579. Next up, Australia, then Switzerland, New Zealand and the United States, which came in at US$134,827.

Canada placed 14th at US$113,755, or $155,850 Canadian at the time the numbers were crunched. This put us in the midst of a cluster of European countries, just below Finland and Austria, but above Belgium and Ireland. Last place on the list was Ethiopia, where the price of happiness was calculated at US$10,176.

Individual cities in Canada had their own price points for happiness, with (no surprise) Victoria, Vancouver and Toronto in the top three spots, between $167,000 and $170,000. Saskatoon was next at just under $160,000, and Kingston placed 19th and the last of the cities surveyed, at just over $140,000.

One oddity among the data was Slovenia, the only country where the average annual income can cover the price of happiness. It placed 42nd on the list of nations overall, with a price of US$36,769. But with an average salary of US$42,754, the typical Slovenian should be able to afford happiness with a little left over in less than a year.

Other countries didn’t fare so well, with the average salary in Luxembourg (US$109,900) covering just 92.8 per cent of the price of happiness there. In Canada, the average salary was deemed to be US$50,500, which would cover just 44.4 per cent of the price of happiness.

But there were worse-off places to be, the study found. Ecuadoreans, with an average salary of US$6,500, would need to toil for more than three years to afford the relatively inexpensive price of happiness (US$19,700) in that country.

• Albertans are 'very dissatisfied' with their lives, people in Quebec highly satisfied: survey
• Canada's housing crisis is dragging life satisfaction down among young adults

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