Wealth and Life Satisfaction Across Europe: Cross-Sectional Evidence on Satiation and Cross-Country Heterogeneity

The relationship between wealth and well-being is less studied compared to income due to limited high-quality data on assets and debts. Wealth, rather than income, better captures an individual’s economic position. This paper uses data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey across 19 European countries and 87,335 observations to analyze the link between household wealth and life satisfaction. The findings show significant heterogeneity across countries regarding wealth satiation, where additional wealth no longer increases life satisfaction. Most countries show no increased life satisfaction for individuals with net wealth over 1 million euros. However, in Spain, Italy, and Malta, wealth satiation occurs at higher thresholds, between 2 and 3 million euros. This indicates that the impact of high wealth on well-being is complex and varies significantly across different cultural and economic contexts.