Relative Income Status Within Marriage and Subjective Well-Being in China: Evidence from Observational and Quasi-Experimental Data

The importance of social comparison has been verified extensively in happiness studies. However, questions about “whether people compare with intimate others” have not been answered satisfactorily. By analyzing a nationally representative survey data and an original quasi-experimental data from China, the current paper examines the impact of the relative income status within marriage on individuals’ subjective well-being. We find that for both genders, husbands’ higher earnings relative to wives always raise one’s life satisfaction. The beneficiary effect of husbands’ higher income is mostly noticeable for families of medium economic status, while the happiness penalty of wives having higher income appears to be universal for families under all financial conditions. A further causal investigation based on a quasi-experimental vignette design provides confirming evidence on the gendered income inequality impacts and the central role of gender ideology in generating such pattern.