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Nominal or Real?: The Impact of Regional Price Levels on Satisfaction with Life

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  • Thomas Deckers
  • Armin Falk
  • Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch

Abstract

We study the effect of real versus nominal income on life satisfaction. According to economic theory real income, i.e., nominal income adjusted for purchasing power, should be the relevant source of life satisfaction. Previous work, however, has only studied the impact of nominal income. We use a novel data set comprising about 7 million data points that are used to construct a price level for each of the about 400 administrative districts in Germany. We estimate a fixed effects model that controls for individual and local heterogeneity other than the price level. Our results show that higher price levels significantly reduce life satisfaction for individuals in the four lowest deciles of the income distribution. Furthermore, our findings suggest that people do not perceive money as neutral: the loss in life satisfaction caused by a higher price level is much larger than the loss in life satisfaction induced by a corresponding decrease in nominal income. Our results provide an argument in favor of regional indexation of government transfer payments such as social welfare benefits.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Deckers & Armin Falk & Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch, 2013. "Nominal or Real?: The Impact of Regional Price Levels on Satisfaction with Life," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 560, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp560
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    Cited by:

    1. Ha Trong Nguyen & Alan Duncan, 2015. "Macroeconomic Fluctuations in Home Countries and Immigrants’ Wellbeing: New Evidence from Down Under," Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre Working Paper series WP1502, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School.
    2. Alberto Montagnoli & Andrea Vaona, 2015. "Searching for Money Illusion in Europe," Working Papers 10/2015, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    3. Petr Janský & Dominika Kolcunová, 2017. "Regional differences in price levels across the European Union and their implications for its regional policy," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 58(3), pages 641-660, May.
    4. Weinand, Sebastian & von Auer, Ludwig, 2019. "Anatomy of regional price differentials: Evidence from micro price data," Discussion Papers 04/2019, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    5. Petr Jansky & Marek Sedivy, 2018. "How Do Regional Price Levels Affect Income Inequality? Household-Level Evidence from 21 Countries," Working Papers IES 2018/24, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised Sep 2018.
    6. Sebastian Weinand & Ludwig von Auer, 2019. "Anatomy of Regional Price Differentials: Evidence From Micro Price Data," Research Papers in Economics 2019-03, University of Trier, Department of Economics.
    7. Natascha Hainbach & Christoph Halbmeier & Timo Schmid & Carsten Schröder, 2019. "A Practical Guide for the Computation of Domain-Level Estimates with the Socio-Economic Panel (and Other Household Surveys)," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1055, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    8. Edsel L. Beja Jr., 2017. "Subjective well-being approach for testing money illusion-evidence using data from Social Weather Stations," Philippine Review of Economics, University of the Philippines School of Economics and Philippine Economic Society, vol. 54(1), pages 47-62, June.
    9. Sebastian Weinand & Ludwig von Auer, 2019. "Anatomy of Regional Price Differentials: Evidence From Micro Price Data," RatSWD Working Papers 268, German Data Forum (RatSWD).
    10. Ha Trong Nguyen & Luke Brian Connelly, 2018. "Out of sight but not out of mind: Home countries' macroeconomic volatilities and immigrants' mental health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 189-208, January.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    life satisfaction; price index; neutrality of money; redistribution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

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