IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/stabus/2024.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

When Is Happiness about How Much You Earn? The Effect of Hourly Payment on the Money-Happiness Connection

Author

Listed:
  • DeVoe, Sanford E.

    (University of Toronto)

  • Pfeffer, Jeffrey

    (Stanford University)

Abstract

We argue that the strength of the relationship between income and happiness can be influenced by exposure to organizational practices, such as being paid by the hour, that promote an economic evaluation of time use. Using cross-sectional data from the US, two studies found that income was more strongly associated with happiness for individuals paid by the hour compared to their non-hourly counterparts. Using panel data from the United Kingdom, Study 3 replicated these results for a multi-item General Health Questionnaire measure of subjective well-being. Study 4 showed that experimentally manipulating the salience of someone's hourly wage rate caused non-hourly paid participants to evince a stronger connection between income and happiness, similar to those participants paid by the hour. Although there were highly consistent results across multiple studies employing multiple methods, overall the effect size was not large.

Suggested Citation

  • DeVoe, Sanford E. & Pfeffer, Jeffrey, 2009. "When Is Happiness about How Much You Earn? The Effect of Hourly Payment on the Money-Happiness Connection," Research Papers 2024, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:stabus:2024
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/library/RP2024.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ed Diener & Robert Biswas-Diener, 2002. "Will Money Increase Subjective Well-Being?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 119-169, February.
    2. Alfonso Sousa-Poza & Fred Henneberger, 2002. "An Empirical Analysis of Working-Hours Constraints in Twenty-one Countries," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 60(2), pages 209-242.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. DeVoe, Sanford E. & Pfeffer, Jeffrey, 2010. "How Higher Economic Value of Time Increases Feelings of Time Pressure," Research Papers 2066, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    2. Blanchflower, David G & Oswald, Andrew, 2011. "International Happiness," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 39, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    3. Pfeffer, Jeffrey & DeVoe, Sanford E., 2012. "The Economic Evaluation of Time Organizational Causes and Individual Consequences," Research Papers 2123, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    4. Gabriela Mihaela Muresan & Cristina Ciumas & Monica Violeta Achim, 2020. "Can Money Buy Happiness? Evidence for European Countries," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 15(4), pages 953-970, September.
    5. Gabriela Mihaela MUREŞAN & Cristina CIUMAŞ, 2020. "Money And Happiness: A Conceptual Integration," Annales Universitatis Apulensis Series Oeconomica, Faculty of Sciences, "1 Decembrie 1918" University, Alba Iulia, vol. 1(22), pages 1-5.
    6. Pai, Jieun & DeVoe, Sanford E. & Pfeffer, Jeffrey, 2020. "How income and the economic evaluation of time affect who we socialize with outside of work," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 158-175.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rojas, Mariano, 2011. "Poverty and psychological distress in Latin America," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 206-217, March.
    2. De Neve, Jan-Emmanuel & Oswald, Andrew J., 2012. "Estimating the influence of life satisfaction and positive affect on later income using sibling fixed-effects," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 51523, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Lonnie Golden & Stuart Glosser, 2013. "Work sharing as a potential policy tool for creating more and better employment: A review of the evidence," Chapters, in: Jon C. Messenger & Naj Ghosheh (ed.), Work Sharing during the Great Recession, chapter 7, pages 203-258, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Young Ho Yun & Ye Eun Rhee & Eunkyo Kang & Jin-ah Sim, 2019. "The Satisfaction with Life Scale and the Subjective Well-Being Inventory in the General Korean Population: Psychometric Properties and Normative Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(9), pages 1-10, April.
    5. Hong, Yan-Zhen & Su, Yi-Ju & Chang, Hung-Hao, 2023. "Analyzing the relationship between income and life satisfaction of Forest farm households - a behavioral economics approach," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    6. Heineck, Guido, 2009. "The determinants of secondary jobholding in Germany and the UK," Zeitschrift für ArbeitsmarktForschung - Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 42(2), pages 107-120.
    7. Rémi Yin & Anthony Lepinteur & Andrew E Clark & Conchita d'Ambrosio, 2021. "Life Satisfaction and the Human Development Index Across the World," Working Papers halshs-03174513, HAL.
    8. OSHIO Takashi & INAGAKI Seiichi, 2014. "Does Initial Job Status Affect Midlife Outcomes and Mental Health? Evidence from a survey in Japan," Discussion papers 14025, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    9. Yoko Mimura, 2023. "Save Today for a Happier Tomorrow: Associations Between Happiness and Financial Preparation in Japan," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 1261-1281, March.
    10. Daniel S. Hamermesh & Jungmin Lee, 2007. "Stressed Out on Four Continents: Time Crunch or Yuppie Kvetch?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(2), pages 374-383, May.
    11. Richard A. Burns, 2019. "The Utility of Between-Nation Subjective Wellbeing Comparisons Amongst Nations Within the European Social Survey," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 683-705, March.
    12. Bernhard Christoph, 2010. "The Relation Between Life Satisfaction and the Material Situation: A Re-Evaluation Using Alternative Measures," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 98(3), pages 475-499, September.
    13. Sujit Raghunathrao Jagadale & Himadri Roy‐Chaudhuri & Djavlonbek Kadirov, 2021. "Quality‐of‐life as chronotopefication and futurization: Subsistence consumer experiences in India," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 59-86, March.
    14. Ingebjørg Kristoffersen, 2010. "The Metrics of Subjective Wellbeing: Cardinality, Neutrality and Additivity," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 86(272), pages 98-123, March.
    15. Clemens Tesch-Römer & Andreas Motel-Klingebiel & Martin Tomasik, 2008. "Gender Differences in Subjective Well-Being: Comparing Societies with Respect to Gender Equality," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 85(2), pages 329-349, January.
    16. Jaikumar, Saravana & Singh, Ramendra & Sarin, Ankur, 2018. "‘I show off, so I am well off’: Subjective economic well-being and conspicuous consumption in an emerging economy," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 386-393.
    17. Chang-ming Hsieh & Qiguang Li, 2022. "Importance Weighting in the Domain-of-Life Approach to Subjective Well-Being: the Consideration of Age," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 17(2), pages 525-540, April.
    18. Louise Lambert D'raven & Nausheen Pasha-Zaidi, 2015. "Happiness in the United Arab Emirates: conceptualisations of happiness among Emirati and other Arab students," International Journal of Happiness and Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 2(1), pages 1-21.
    19. Bucciol, Alessandro & Burro, Giovanni, 2022. "Is there a happiness premium for working in the public sector? Evidence from Italy," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    20. Sabine Weck & Isabel Ramos Lobato, 2015. "Social exclusion: Continuities and discontinuities in explaining local patterns," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 30(7), pages 765-782, November.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ecl:stabus:2024. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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://edirc.repec.org/data/gsstaus.html .

    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.