Next time someone brings up the argument of teaching as a bad job because of the paycheck, I’ll throw this in their face:
Daniel Kahneman, one of the founders of behavioral economics and Nobel Prize winner, gave an interesting talk on TED about happiness. Towards the end of his speech, during the Q&A, he tells us:
below an income of $60,000 a year, for Americans… people are unhappy, and they get progressively unhappier the poorer they get. Above that, we get an absolutely flat line. I mean I’ve rarely seen lines so flat. Clearly, what is happening is money does not buy you experiential happiness, but lack of money certainly buys you misery, and we can measure that misery very, very clearly.
With a benchmark of $60,000 I decided to take a look at the average California teacher’s salary (why California? Because if I don’t want to pay back my loans from graduate school then I better spend my first five years teaching in this state; than again, Of all the states to be locked into, I think I’d prefer this over any other). After some research, it turns out that the average teacher salary in California is $59,825. So teachers are at the perfect threshold for financial happiness. I was wondering why I was so happy lately… It’s always a great feeling when I stumble upon more validation for my life choices
