IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v52y2017i2p374-417.html

The Effect of Income on Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from the 2008 Economic Stimulus Tax Rebates

Author

Listed:
  • Marta Lachowska

Abstract

This paper uses tax rebate payments from the 2008 economic stimulus to estimate the effect of a one-time change in income on three measures of subjective well-being: life satisfaction, health satisfaction, and affect. The income effect is identified by exploiting the plausibly exogenous variation in the payment schedule of the rebates. Using both ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares estimators, I find that the rebates had a large and positive impact on affect, which is explained by a reduction in feelings of stress and worry. For life satisfaction and health satisfaction, there is weaker evidence of a positive impact.

Suggested Citation

  • Marta Lachowska, 2017. "The Effect of Income on Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from the 2008 Economic Stimulus Tax Rebates," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 52(2), pages 374-417.
    • Handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:52:y:2017:i:2:p:374-417
    Note: DOI: 10.3368/jhr.52.2.1014-6727R1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jhr.uwpress.org/cgi/reprint/52/2/374
    Download Restriction: A subscription is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kim, Seonghoon & Koh, Kanghyock, 2018. "Does Health Insurance Make People Happier? Evidence from Massachusetts' Healthcare Reform," IZA Discussion Papers 11879, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Eduardo Ignacio Polo-Muro, 2021. "The effect of labor market shocks on mental health outcomes: evidence from the Spanish Great Recession," Working Papers 21.08, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
    3. Kim, Seonghoon & Koh, Kanghyock, 2019. "The Effects of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansion on Subjective Well-being," IZA Discussion Papers 12636, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Susanne Elsas, 2021. "Causality in the Link between Income and Satisfaction: IV Estimation with Internal Instruments," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1143, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    5. Andersen, Asbjørn G. & Kotsadam, Andreas & Somville, Vincent, 2022. "Material resources and well-being — Evidence from an Ethiopian housing lottery," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    6. Joan Costa-Font & Mario Györi, 2023. "Income windfalls and overweight: evidence from lottery wins," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(5), pages 2005-2026, May.
    7. Klein Teeselink, Bouke & Zauberman, Gal, 2023. "The Anna Karenina income effect: Well-being inequality decreases with income," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 501-513.
    8. Seonghoon Kim & Kanghyock Koh, 2022. "Health insurance and subjective well‐being: Evidence from two healthcare reforms in the United States," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(1), pages 233-249, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:52:y:2017:i:2:p:374-417. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://jhr.uwpress.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.