The Scarcity Mindset in an Age of Abundance: Financial Anxiety Among the Affluent

The MyMoneyCoach Research Team wrote this review. It is education, not financial, medical or mental health advice. Survey figures are quoted as the publishers reported them, and most come from single polls whose full methods we could not read.

Introduction: Money worry at higher incomes

Yes, several surveys report financial anxiety among the affluent. Industry polls find financial stress and worry about making ends meet in households earning $150,000 to $200,000 and up. The polls are single surveys with limited published detail, and none shows why. Scarcity research on thinking is disputed and was not tested in affluent groups.

Many people assume that enough income ends money worry. The surveys we could trace suggest it does not always.

• A Salary Finance and FinFit report ("Inside the Wallets of Working Americans," 5th annual report) states: "Even among those making over $200,000 a year, 39% of them still experience financial stress."¹ The publisher's summary page does not give the sample or the definition of "financial stress," and trade coverage describes the survey as about 2,000 working Americans fielded in January.
• The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's LIFE survey found that in April 2024, 32.5% of respondents earning $150,000 or more were worried about making ends meet over the next six months, up from 21.7% a year earlier.² This is press coverage of the survey, not the Bank's own tables.
• PYMNTS Intelligence reported that 52% of people earning $100,000 or more were "reactors" in January 2025, up from 27% in February 2024.³ PYMNTS defines reactors by behavior (occasionally or rarely paying off credit card balances, balances above $2,000, under $2,500 in savings). The trade summary also describes them as people who manage finances as obligations arise. Sample size was not published in the pages we read.

The three polls above are snapshots from commercial or regional surveys. They show that money worry is reported at high incomes. They do not show why, and they do not show how common it is across all affluent households.

What does the research on money and happiness say?

Two well-known studies of income and happiness are often used in this conversation, and they are less simple than their headlines.

Kahneman and Deaton (2010), using more than 450,000 Gallup-Healthways responses, found that emotional well-being rose with log income but showed no further gain beyond about $75,000 a year, while life evaluation kept rising with income.⁴ In 2023, Killingsworth, Kahneman and Mellers reported that a joint reanalysis resolved an apparent conflict with Killingsworth's earlier work. The flattening pattern held only for the least happy people. Among happier people, happiness kept rising with income.⁵

So the evidence does not say that money cannot help. It says that more money does not lift everyone equally, and that some people stay unhappy as income rises.

"Scarcity" and what it does and does not mean

The research term "scarcity" comes from work by Mullainathan and Shafir. Shah, Mullainathan and Shafir (2012) reported across several experiments that having too little changes how people allocate attention. It leads them to engage more deeply with the pressing problem and to neglect others, which the authors used to help explain behaviors such as overborrowing.⁶ In Mani and colleagues (2013, Science), thinking about financial problems lowered cognitive performance among poorer participants but not among better-off participants. The same farmers also scored lower before harvest than after, and the authors reported that stress did not explain the farmers' result.⁷ A brain-imaging study found that, compared with an abundance mindset, a scarcity mindset raised activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, a region tied to valuation, and lowered activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region tied to goal-directed choice.⁸ That was a lab induction of a mindset, not a measure of everyday money life.

The scarcity evidence is also disputed. Wicherts and Scholten (2013) reanalyzed the Mani data without dichotomizing income and reported that it "fails to corroborate their findings," pointing to ceiling effects on short, easy tests. They suggested that effects of financial worries are not limited to the poor, which is their reading and not a tested finding in affluent groups.⁹ Mani and colleagues replied that the income-by-manipulation interaction held with a continuous income measure and that their cognitive control results did not look driven by ceiling effects.¹⁰ A 2021 PNAS audit that replicated 20 scarcity studies found "considerable variability in the replicability, with some strong successes and other undeniable failures," and its authors declined to give an overall replication rate.¹¹ The original scarcity researchers responded that the audit mischaracterized the literature.¹² Separately, Carvalho, Meier and Wang (2016) randomly assigned low-income US households to be surveyed before or after payday. They found no difference in risk taking, decision quality or cognitive function, though choices about money were more present-biased before payday.¹³ The popular "13 IQ points" figure is press framing, not a measured IQ change.

In short, some scarcity findings are supported and some are contested, and the best-known lab effects have not been settled by either side. This matters for the affluent. The studies concern people with real shortages. Applying them to a high earner who feels "never enough" is an extension that the studies themselves did not test. In this review, "scarcity mindset" is a descriptive label for the feeling of not having enough, not a finding that affluent people lose cognitive bandwidth.

One real-world study did measure relief. When a Singapore charity cleared debt for low-income households, each additional debt account paid off was linked to about a quarter of a standard deviation better cognitive functioning and an 11% lower likelihood of anxiety, in 196 beneficiaries compared before and after.¹⁴ The design was quasi-experimental, not randomized, and the authors' explanation (the mental cost of tracking separate debts) is their interpretation. It concerns low-income households, not high earners.

Money worry and psychological distress

Money worry goes with distress. Using the 2018 National Health Interview Survey, Ryu and Fan (2023) found that higher financial worries were significantly associated with higher psychological distress. The association was stronger among unmarried adults, the unemployed, lower-income households and renters than among their counterparts.¹⁵ This is cross-sectional work, so it shows an association and not which direction it runs. It also means the link is not only a low-income story, but it is stronger there.

Looking away from the numbers

Investors offer the clearest measured example of avoiding money information. Karlsson, Loewenstein and Seppi (2009) described an "ostrich effect," in which investors monitor their portfolios more when markets are rising than when they are falling.¹⁶ Sicherman, Loewenstein, Seppi and Utkus (2016) used daily account logins and reported that "account logins fall by 9.5% after market declines."¹⁷ These studies cover investors, mostly during market declines. They are not the same as avoiding bills or debt.

In a lab task that came closer to everyday expenses, participants put into a financial scarcity condition were more likely to delay paying an expense at no extra cost. Their eye movements showed no sign of looking away from the expense letters.¹⁸ Gladstone and colleagues (2021) reported across six studies (N = 9,110) that shame induces financial withdrawal, which increases the probability of counterproductive financial decisions that deepen financial hardship.¹⁹ Their designs mixed experiments, archival data and correlations. No single study has shown the full chain from worry to avoidance to worse outcomes, and none of them was designed to test whether the pattern differs for high earners.

Lifestyle and comparison

Many writers describe "lifestyle creep," where spending rises with income and leaves little slack. We looked for primary research on this among high earners and found only commentary, planner anecdotes and forum posts, so we do not present it as a measured effect. It is a plausible explanation for the surveys above, not a demonstrated one.

On comparison, Morgan Housel writes in The Psychology of Money that the ceiling of social comparison is so high that almost no one reaches it.²⁰ That is an author's argument. It is a useful way to think about "enough," and it is not a study result.

Loss aversion

Loss aversion is the finding that losses tend to weigh more than equal gains. In Tversky and Kahneman's 1992 estimates, the median coefficient was 2.25, from 25 graduate students making hypothetical choices.²¹ Gal and Rucker (2018) argue that the evidence for a general loss-aversion effect is weaker than commonly stated.²² We found no study showing that loss aversion is stronger among wealthy people, so the idea that it is "magnified" for them is a hypothesis in this review, not a finding.

What happens when net worth becomes self-worth?

Park, Ward and Naragon-Gainey (2017, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin) developed a measure of how much people base their self-esteem on financial success. In a sample of 349 college students and 389 participants from a nationally representative sample, higher financial contingency of self-worth went with more financial social comparison, less felt autonomy, and more financial hassles, stress and anxiety.²³ In the experiments, people with high scores who wrote about a financial stressor reported a drop in autonomy and more negative emotion words. A self-affirmation exercise removed that effect.²³ This is correlational work in mostly non-wealthy samples, so it does not show that wealth causes the pattern.

Sudden wealth

"Sudden wealth syndrome" was coined around 1999 by Stephen Goldbart and Joan Di Furia of the Money, Meaning and Choices Institute. The reported themes include isolation, guilt, uncertainty and worry about being exploited.²⁴ We found this described in practitioner writing and press, and did not find controlled studies of it. Treat it as a label from wealth counseling, not as an established clinical finding.

Affluent young people

Luthar (2003, Child Development) reviewed studies suggesting that children of affluence face problems with substance use, anxiety and depression, and proposed two possible causes: pressure to achieve and isolation from parents.²⁵ These are proposed explanations from a review, and later work should be consulted before drawing firm conclusions about any one family.

What this suggests for coaching

The honest summary of this research is modest. Money worry is reported at high incomes in several polls. Research does not show that income alone settles it, and the mechanisms people often cite (lifestyle creep, comparison, loss aversion, self-worth tied to net worth) are plausible but only partly measured. A practical step is to define "enough" in your own terms and notice when worry is about the number and when it is about something else, such as identity or security. Anyone dealing with significant distress should talk with a licensed mental health professional or a qualified financial planner.

Works Cited

Footnotes

1. Salary Finance & FinFit. Inside the Wallets of Working Americans: The 5th Annual Report. https://resources.salaryfinance.com/itw-key-findings ↩

2. Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Labor, Income, Finances, and Expectations (LIFE) survey, April 2024 results, as reported in Fortune (27 June 2024). https://www.fortune.com/2024/06/27/wealthy-americans-six-figures-concerned-financially-economy ↩

3. PYMNTS Intelligence (2025). "52% of Those Earning Over $100K Manage Finances on As-Needed Basis." https://pymnts.com/consumer-insights/2025/high-income-earners-have-a-secret-uncertainty-is-impacting-them-too ; and "The Secret Financial Life of Six-Figure Households," https://www.pymnts.com/consumer-insights/2025/the-secret-financial-life-of-six-figure-households/ ↩

4. Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A. (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. PNAS, 107(38). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2944762 ↩

5. Killingsworth, M. A., Kahneman, D., & Mellers, B. (2023). Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved. PNAS, 120(10). doi:10.1073/pnas.2208661120 ↩

6. Shah, A. K., Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2012). Some consequences of having too little. Science, 338(6107), 682-685. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23118192/ ↩

7. Mani, A., Mullainathan, S., Shafir, E., & Zhao, J. (2013). Poverty impedes cognitive function. Science, 341(6149), 976-980. doi:10.1126/science.1238041 ↩

8. Huijsmans, I., Ma, I., Micheli, L., Civai, C., Stallen, M., & Sanfey, A. G. (2019). A scarcity mindset alters neural processing underlying consumer decision making. PNAS, 116(24), 11699-11704. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31123150/ ↩

9. Wicherts, J. M., & Scholten, A. Z. (2013). Comment on "Poverty impedes cognitive function." Science, 342(6163), 1169. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24311665/ ↩

10. Mani, A., Mullainathan, S., Shafir, E., & Zhao, J. (2013). Response to comment on "Poverty impedes cognitive function." Science, 342(6163), 1169. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24311666/ ↩

11. O'Donnell, M., et al. (2021). An empirical audit and review of the evidentiary value of research on the psychological consequences of scarcity. PNAS, 118(44). ↩

12. Shah, A. K., Zhao, J., Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2023). A scarcity literature mischaracterized with an empirical audit. PNAS, 120(26), e2206054120. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37339220/ ↩

13. Carvalho, L. S., Meier, S., & Wang, S. W. (2016). Poverty and economic decision-making: Evidence from changes in financial resources at payday. American Economic Review, 106(2), 260-284. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20140481 ↩

14. Ong, Q., Theseira, W., & Ng, I. Y. H. (2019). Reducing debt improves psychological functioning and changes decision-making in the poor. PNAS, 116(15), 7244-7249. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30910964/ ↩

15. Ryu, S., & Fan, L. (2023). The relationship between financial worries and psychological distress among U.S. adults. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 44(1), 16-33. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35125855/ ↩

16. Karlsson, N., Loewenstein, G., & Seppi, D. (2009). The ostrich effect: Selective attention to information. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 38, 95-115. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11166-009-9060-6 ↩

17. Sicherman, N., Loewenstein, G., Seppi, D. J., & Utkus, S. P. (2016). Financial attention. Review of Financial Studies, 29(4), 863-897. https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/hhv073 ↩

18. Hilbert, L. P., Noordewier, M. K., Seck, L., & van Dijk, W. W. (2024). Financial scarcity and financial avoidance: An eye-tracking and behavioral experiment. Psychological Research, 88(8), 2211-2220. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39158712/ ↩

19. Gladstone, J. J., Jachimowicz, J. M., Greenberg, A. E., & Galinsky, A. D. (2021). Financial shame spirals: How shame intensifies financial hardship. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 167, 42-56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2021.06.002 ↩

20. Housel, M. (2020). The Psychology of Money. Harriman House. (Chapter 3, "Never Enough"; paraphrased, not quoted.) ↩

21. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1992). Advances in prospect theory: Cumulative representation of uncertainty. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 5, 297-323. (Original: Kahneman & Tversky, 1979, Econometrica.) doi:10.1007/bf00122574 ↩

22. Gal, D., & Rucker, D. D. (2018). The loss of loss aversion: Will it loom larger than its gain? Journal of Consumer Psychology, 28(3), 497-516. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3049660 doi:10.1002/jcpy.1047 ↩

23. Park, L. E., Ward, D. E., & Naragon-Gainey, K. (2017). It's all about the money (for some): Consequences of financially contingent self-worth. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Summary: https://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2017/04/046.html doi:10.1177/0146167216689080 ↩ ↩²

24. Goldbart, S., & Di Furia, J. (c. 1999). Sudden wealth syndrome, Money, Meaning and Choices Institute. As described at https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/cm/sudden-wealth-syndrome ↩

25. Luthar, S. S. (2003). The culture of affluence: Psychological costs of material wealth. Child Development, 74(6), 1581-1593. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1950124 ↩