Book/Printed Material Neighbors as negatives relative earnings and well-being
About this Item
Title
- Neighbors as negatives relative earnings and well-being
Summary
- "This paper investigates whether individuals feel worse off when others around them earn more. In other words, do people care about relative position and does lagging behind the Joneses' diminish well-being? To answer this question, I match individual-level panel data containing a number of indicators of well-being to information about local average earnings. I find that, controlling for an individual's own income, higher earnings of neighbors are associated with lower levels of self-reported happiness. The data's panel nature and rich set of measures of well-being and behavior indicate that this association is not driven by selection or by changes in the way people define happiness. There is suggestive evidence that the negative effect of increases in neighbors' earnings on own well-being is most likely caused by interpersonal preferences people having utility functions that depend on relative consumption in addition to absolute consumption"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Names
- Luttmer, Erzo F. P.
- National Bureau of Economic Research
Created / Published
- Cambridge, MA : National Bureau of Economic Research, c2004.
Headings
- - Envy--Economic aspects
- - Social status--United States
- - Social values--United States
Notes
- - Title from PDF file as viewed on 1/11/2005.
- - Includes bibliographical references.
- - Also available in print.
- - Mode of access: World Wide Web.
- - System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Call Number/Physical Location
- HB1
Digital Id
- https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gdc/gdcebookspublic.2005615411
- http://papers.nber.org/papers/W10667 External
Library of Congress Control Number
- 2005615411
Access Advisory
- Unrestricted online access
Online Format
- image