The 1% are much more satisfied with their lives than everyone else, survey finds

Adults in the top 1% of U.S. household income - those who earn at least $500,000 a year - have “dramatically different life experiences” than everyone else, according to a unique new survey from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The findings show a “near-universal life satisfaction” for the wealthiest Americans as they accumulate more and more of the country's riches. Fully 90% of the 1% say they are “completely” or “very” satisfied with their lives in general, compared with two-thirds of middle-income households (defined as those earning $35,000 to $99,000 a year) and just 44% of low-income households (those in the $35,000 a year or less bracket).

Perhaps most remarkably, the share of 1-percenters expressing “dissatisfaction” with their lives is statistically indistinguishable from zero.

Because the top 1% is such a tiny subset of the population, public opinion surveys aren't usually capable of delving into their views. A typical survey with 1,000 respondents would be expected to include just 10 members of the top 1%. The NPR/RWJF/Harvard survey, by contrast, oversampled at the top end of the income spectrum to include 250 respondents in the top 1%.

There's robust economics literature on the relationship between money and happiness. At the risk of oversimplification, studies have found a strong correlation up to the level of about $75,000 in annual earnings. Beyond that, the returns to more money are smaller but still apparent.

Researchers, however, tend to distinguish between two forms of well-being measurements: there's “happiness,” which is an in-the-moment emotional state, and “life satisfaction,” which is an assessment of how things are going in the long-term. These qualities are highly correlated but can be at odds: having children, for instance, can bring parents a sense of overall life fulfillment along with a lot of minute-to-minute aggravation and unhappiness.

The survey asks respondents about life satisfaction, rather than in-the-moment happiness. And though studies have shown there's a happiness “satiation point” - the mark beyond which more money doesn't have much impact on your day-to-day mood - the new survey's first-of-its kind data on the 1% shows that life satisfaction continues to rise with income through at least the $500,000-a-year threshold.

The rich might not be any happier than the rest of us on a day-to-day basis, in other words, but they are an awful lot more self-satisfied. Among the 1%, for instance, fully 97% say that they've already obtained the “American Dream” - the definition of which was left to the respondent - or are actively working toward it. Among low-income adults, by contrast, 4 in 10 say the American Dream is completely out of reach.

The rich also have little practical experience with the day-to-day financial concerns of most Americans. Among low-income households, for instance, nearly 40% said they had trouble paying their medical bills in the past several years and 30% reported having difficulty paying for food. Among the top 1%, those shares were 5% and zero, respectively.

The survey also illustrates how the rich are different when it comes to questions of policy. More than half of the top 1%, for instance, say it should not be a priority for federal lawmakers to reduce income differences between the rich and the poor. Conversely, more than two-thirds of low income Americans say reducing inequality should be a federal priority.

Though 59% of low-income Americans say the wealthy should pay more taxes, just over a third of the top 1% say the same.