We have all thought at some point that with a little more salary we would be happier. We wouldn’t have to worry about unforeseen events, vacations would have more “extras” and shopping wouldn’t be a constant search for the best price on meat or eggs. But to what extent is that true? How much money would it take to be happy?
That’s precisely what they asked themselves. in a studio from Purdue University. Now, a report from Remitly has crossed the data obtained in that report with the real cost of living data and we can put concrete figures to happiness in Spain.
Money doesn’t make you happy, does it? The Purdue University research analyzed data from more than one and a half million people in 164 countries and the conclusion they reached is similar to the one they reached other investigations: that happiness increases proportionally to the level of income. However, it only does so up to a certain income level.
From this ceiling of happiness, what the authors of the study call “income satiation” occurs. That is, earning more money from a certain ceiling no longer improves how you evaluate the happiness in your life nor in your day-to-day emotions. However, the most interesting thing, and the part in which the Remitly payment platform has intervened, is that this economic ceiling for happiness is not the same everywhere. It depends on the cost of living, the culture and the purchasing power of each place.
The key to understanding the figures: salaries adjusted to purchasing power. Before continuing, there is an important nuance. One of the key data in the study is the average salaries that people receive in different countries. That is why the income figures you are going to read do not correspond to real salaries as someone would see them on their payroll. These are adjusted figures for each country. according to your purchasing power (PPA).
This means that a conversion has been made to compare very different economies with each other to more realistically represent each person’s ability to purchase products. A salary of 40,000 euros in Spain don’t buy the same than one of $40,000 in the United States, so these data seek to balance that difference. The Remitly team took the satiety points calculated by Purdue and adjusted them according to local purchasing powerusing International Monetary Fund ratios and updated inflation data. The result is a map that allows you to compare the “price of happiness” between countries in a realistic way.
The global data: Iceland up, Ethiopia down. With this methodology, the country where it is most difficult to reach that happiness ceiling is Iceland, with $163,579 per year. However, their high salaries and the quality of life provided by the State position them as the second happiest country in 2025.
Slovenia, with adjusted salaries of $42,800 per year, is the only country in the world in which, on average, the salary that its citizens would consider sufficient to be happy ($36,800) would be 16.3% higher. Luxembourg’s salaries ($109,900 per year) would cover 92.8% of that “happiness figure”, followed by Estonia and Singapore, whose salaries come close to covering 92.8% and 90.5% respectively of that happiness threshold.
At the opposite extreme is Ecuador, whose adjusted annual salary of $6,500 per year would only cover 32.9% of the $19,700 per year that Ecuadorians consider an adequate figure to be happy.
Spain: we need double. If we focus on Spain, the average salary adjusted for purchasing power is around $42,500 annually. However, the price of happiness is set at about $87,900 a year. That is, the salary would only cover 48.4% and it would be necessary to double salaries to reach the desirable threshold for money to bring happiness.
Spain remains, once again, in the area where work does not translate into the economic tranquility that many seek and the concern to make ends meet It continues to be a brake on achieving full happiness.
Happiness also depends on the zip code. The Remitly report goes a little further and analyzes the impact of salary on happiness even within each country, and has discovered that in Spain there are important differences between cities when establishing the amount of money they would be happy with.
Madrid tops the list with a price of happiness of 89,759 euros per year, slightly above the happiness threshold established for the country as a whole. Barcelona (88,562 euros) and Palma de Mallorca (88,263 euros) follow very closely, three cities that also coincide among the cities with the most expensive housing prices in the country.
At the opposite extreme we find Granada, with 73,153 euros per year. It is 18.5% less than in Madrid. The climate, architecture and a lower cost of living help lower the economic bar. That doesn’t mean that life is easier in Granada, but less money is needed to reach that ceiling of well-being and happiness that the study indicates.
And now what? Beyond the numbers, what this report shows is that, in the majority of the planet, salaries are below what would be needed to feel fully satisfied.
However, the authors of the Purdue study themselves warn that even if someone reaches that economic threshold for happiness, that does not mean they will suddenly be much happier. The researchers highlight that there is what they call “hedonic adaptation“, the tendency to always return to a similar level of spirit, readjusting our demand for well-being, no matter what happens and no matter what salary is earned.
Money helps, a lot, to a certain point. But from there, it seems that happiness begins to also depend on other things.
Image | Unsplash (Christian Dubovan), Remitly
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