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The effects of neighbourhood and workplace income comparisons on subjective wellbeing

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  • Noy, Shakked
  • Sin, Isabelle

Abstract

We investigate how a person’s happiness is affected by the incomes of her neighbours and coworkers. Using an unprecedentedly rich combination of administrative and survey data, we establish two central results. First, a person’s happiness is sensitive to her ordinal rank within her peer income distribution: people are happier the higher their income rank. Second, workplace rank matters much more than neighbourhood rank. We confirm that our results reflect a causal effect of peer income by implementing sensitivity analyses, identifying off changes in peer income over time for immobile people, exploiting plausibly exogenous moves between workplaces triggered by mass layoffs, and testing for the effects of unobservable group-level confounders.

Suggested Citation

  • Noy, Shakked & Sin, Isabelle, 2021. "The effects of neighbourhood and workplace income comparisons on subjective wellbeing," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 918-945.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:185:y:2021:i:c:p:918-945
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.11.008
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    3. Nicholas Biddle & Maria Jahromi, 2023. "Gender Differences in the Relationship Between Labour Market Outcomes and Well‐being," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 99(325), pages 207-237, June.
    4. Dagdeviren, Hulya & Elangovan, Arthanari & Parimalavelli, Ramanathan, 2023. "Land tenure and food security in South India," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    5. Eiji Yamamura, 2021. "Where do I rank? Am I happy?: learning income position and subjective-wellbeing in an internet experiment," Papers 2107.11185, arXiv.org.
    6. Liu, Yan & Chen, Minjie & Yu, Jianyu & Wang, Xiaobing, 2024. "Being a happy farmer: Technology adoption and subjective well-being," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 385-405.
    7. Gu, Xin & Li, Hao & Peng, Langchuan, 2022. "The anti-domestic violence law and women's welfare: Evidence from a natural experiment in China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 1-16.
    8. Stark, Holger & Kosiorowski, Grzegorz, 2023. "A Pure Theory of Population Distribution When Preferences Are Ordinal," IZA Discussion Papers 15923, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Subjective wellbeing; Income comparisons; Relative income;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

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