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Research on income and well-being has identified a "satiation point": a level of earnings beyond which money no longer adds to a person's joy in life. Remitly, drawing on work from Purdue University and data from the International Labour Organization, calculated this "price of happiness" for 50 countries and compared it with the average local wage. Almost everywhere, the average worker falls short of the threshold.

The only country where wages have crossed that threshold is Slovenia. There the average wage is about $42,800 and the price of happiness $36,800, meaning earnings run 16% above the level beyond which happiness no longer grows. No other country crosses the line.

Next on the list come not the wealthiest economies but, for the most part, Eastern Europe. Luxembourg (92.8% of its threshold), Estonia (90.5%), Singapore (90.0%), Lithuania, Czechia, Latvia. Seven of the top eleven spots went to Central and Eastern European countries. Their wages are modest by global standards, but their price of happiness is low too, so the gap between the two stays small.

For the rich, high-wage countries the gap is the opposite, huge, because their price of happiness climbs even faster than pay. In the US the average wage is the third-highest in the study, $75,300, yet it covers only 55.8% of the local happiness threshold of $134,800. Australia's price of happiness is the highest on the list, $161,300, double the average wage. The UK, Canada and New Zealand are in the same trap: wages are high, but they're further from their own expensive happiness than workers in less wealthy Eastern Europe.