Journal of Happiness Studies

, Volume 14, Issue 4, pp 1379–1408 | Cite as

Are Relative-Income Effects Constant Across the Well-Being Distribution?

Research Paper
First Online:

Abstract

This paper challenges the common assumption made by economists to date that income comparisons are similarly important in different segments of the subjective well-being (SWB) distribution. The results, based on the 2000–2007 waves of the German SOEP and on a Generalized Ordered Probit for panel data, show that relative income, as measured either by the mean income of the reference group or the individual ordinal ranking within the group, exerts a differential effect across SWB levels. Such divergence is assessed by means of the tradeoff ratio between household income and the relative income variables. The results show that a low rank and falling below the average income in one’s group are significant determinants of low SWB but largely irrelevant when accounting for high SWB. The fact that conditionally unhappy individuals are more sensitive to comparisons, particularly if they are unfavorable, is consistent with earlier laboratory studies in the field of psychology.

Keywords

Subjective well-being Comparison income Income rank Generalized ordered response model 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education through grant SEJ2006-11067 and the Junta de Andalucía through grant P07-SEJ-03261 is gratefully acknowledged. Part of this research was developed during a research visit at the Department of Economics of the University of Verona. The author thanks the faculty members for their warm hospitality.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.CEEAplA and IZAFunchalPortugal

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