What makes a life well lived?

What did the longest study of adult life find?

The Harvard Study of Adult Development began in 1938, during the Great Depression, by following 268 Harvard sophomores. According to the Harvard Gazette, 456 men from Boston’s inner city were enlisted in the 1970s as part of the Glueck Study. Women were not in the original study because Harvard College was then all male. Researchers later added the men’s wives and children.

Over the decades, the team collected medical records, questionnaires and hundreds of interviews. The Gazette reports that they found a strong correlation between the men’s flourishing and their ties to family, friends and community. In his 2015 TED talk, the study’s fourth director, Robert Waldinger, said the lessons “aren’t about wealth or fame or working harder and harder.” He named three:

• Connection helps, and loneliness hurts. People who were more connected to family, friends and community were happier and physically healthier, and they lived longer.
• Quality matters more than quantity. Waldinger said that high-conflict marriages without much affection can be very bad for health, perhaps worse than divorce.
• Good relationships seem to protect the brain. People in their 80s who felt they could count on their partner kept sharper memories longer.

When the team looked back at the men at age 50, it wasn’t their cholesterol that best predicted how they would age. It was how satisfied they were in their relationships. Waldinger added that the most happily partnered people in their 80s said their mood stayed just as happy on days when they had more physical pain. A smaller study by Waldinger and a colleague, of 47 older couples over eight days, points the same way: for people happy in their marriage, days of poorer health brought a smaller drop in happiness.

The World Happiness Report 2026 looks at whole countries. Its ranking rests on one question from the Gallup World Poll. People imagine a ladder, with the worst possible life at step 0 and the best at step 10, and say where they stand. Finland topped the 2026 ranking for the ninth year in a row, with an average of 7.764. The United States ranked 23rd. To explain the gaps between countries, the report looks at six factors: income per person, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption. The report’s own FAQ says these factors show links, not clean causes.

Can money buy happiness?

In 2010, the researchers Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton studied more than 450,000 survey answers from Americans. They split well-being into two parts. Life evaluation is how you rate your life when you stop to think about it. Emotional well-being is how your days actually feel. Life evaluation kept rising with income. But day-to-day feelings seemed to stop improving at about $75,000 a year.

In 2021, the researcher Matthew Killingsworth used people’s smartphones to collect 1,725,994 in-the-moment reports from 33,391 working U.S. adults. He found no plateau. Feelings kept rising with income, even above $75,000.

Then the two sides did something unusual. Killingsworth and Kahneman teamed up, with Barbara Mellers as a neutral facilitator, in what is called an adversarial collaboration. Their 2023 paper found that both sides were partly right. For the least happy 15 to 20% of people, happiness rose with income and then leveled off at about $100,000. For everyone else, it kept rising, and for the happiest people it rose even faster. The authors also stressed how small the effect is. The median happiness of people earning $15,000 and people earning $250,000 differed by only about five points on a 100-point scale.

What about sudden money? A popular idea says lottery winners soon drift back to where they started. A study of Swedish lottery players, published in 2020, found otherwise. Five to 22 years after their win, large-prize winners were still more satisfied with their lives than a matched comparison group of players. The effects on day-to-day happiness and mental health were smaller.

So money matters, most of all when it eases hardship. It matters more for how you rate your life than for how your days feel.

What do philosophers and faiths say a good life is?

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains that “happiness” has two main senses. In one, it is a state of mind: pleasure, feeling good, or being satisfied with your life. In the other, it means well-being or flourishing, a life that goes well for you. Calling a life happy in that second sense is a value judgment. Psychologists use a similar split. Hedonic well-being is about pleasant feelings. Eudaimonic well-being covers things like meaning, personal growth and good relationships.

The word eudaimonic comes from Aristotle. In his ethics, as the Stanford Encyclopedia explains, eudaimonia means living well. It is the highest goal, and things like health and wealth are sought because they help you live well. For Aristotle, living well means a life of virtuous activity, and he gave two whole books of his ethics to friendship.

Many religious traditions answer differently. The Stanford Encyclopedia notes that the oldest and most influential God-based view in the Western tradition holds that a life is significant if it fulfills a purpose God has assigned.

Does faith go with happiness? A 2019 Pew Research Center study found that 36% of actively religious Americans, those who attend services at least monthly, called themselves very happy. That compares with a quarter of both less active believers and the religiously unaffiliated. In 12 of 25 other countries, active believers were happier than the unaffiliated by a statistically significant margin. But Pew says it is unclear whether religion causes the difference. Pew notes that earlier research suggests one factor may be the social connection that comes with regular worship.

Where can people of faith and skeptics agree?

• People matter. The Harvard Study points to close relationships, and Pew suggests the social side of worship may be one reason regular worshippers report more happiness.
• Feeling good is not the whole story. Aristotle and God-centered views both see a good life as more than pleasure. The Stanford Encyclopedia notes that most people say they would not plug into a machine that fakes pleasant experiences for life.

Is forgiveness good for the person who forgives?

The evidence suggests it can be. A 2014 meta-analysis, a study that combines many studies, pooled 54 research reports on programs led by trained professionals to help people forgive a specific hurt. People in these programs forgave more than people who got no treatment. They also saw greater drops in depression and anxiety, and more hope. Longer programs led to more forgiveness.

Forgiving is not the same as excusing what happened, or going back to someone who hurt you. The Stanford Encyclopedia says the more common view among philosophers is that you can forgive without reconciling. The research can’t say whether you should forgive a particular person. It suggests that working toward forgiveness can help the one doing the forgiving.

What is the strongest objection?

The strongest objection is that most of this evidence shows links, not causes. The Harvard Gazette itself describes a strong correlation. Maybe good relationships make people healthier. Or maybe healthier, more cheerful people find it easier to keep good relationships. Pew makes the same point about religion: happier people may be more active, rather than the other way around.

A second objection is about who was studied. The Harvard Study began with men only, from Harvard and from Boston’s inner city, in one era. The money studies used U.S. data, and the 2023 paper warns that the link between money and happiness is weak.

These are fair limits. But the relationship finding shows up again and again. The Stanford Encyclopedia lists supportive relationships among the generally accepted chief correlates of happiness.

What do people often get wrong?

“Good relationships are smooth.” Waldinger said some couples in their 80s bickered day in and day out. As long as they felt they could count on each other, the arguments didn’t take a toll on their memories.

“Money can’t buy happiness.” That is too simple. Income is linked to higher life ratings, and for most people to better days, but the effect is small.

“Your happiness is fixed.” The Stanford Encyclopedia reports that the dominant view now seems to be that early claims about a fixed happiness “set point” were exaggerated. Many things can have lasting effects.

How can you check this yourself?

• Ask which kind of happiness. When a headline says money buys happiness, check whether it means life ratings or daily feelings.
• Ask about cause. Does the study show that one thing causes another, or only that they go together?
• Read the sources. The World Happiness Report and the money papers are free to read online.
• Try a small test in your own life. Call a friend you have lost touch with, and notice how you feel. For more, read our story What Does Science Say About Happiness?

The answer stays the same. What makes a life well lived is partly a question of values, and science can’t settle it. But across studies, countries and traditions, good relationships stand out as one of the surest supports of a good life.