EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The modification of social space as a tool for lowering social stress

Oded Stark

Economics & Human Biology, 2024, vol. 53, issue C

Abstract: The social stress experienced by an individual from having a low relative income or from having a low income-based rank is a derivative of the individual's location in social space, and is the outcome of unfavorable comparisons with other individuals in that space. (The term social space stands for the set of individuals with whose incomes or with whose income-based ranks the individual compares his income or his income-based rank.) The stress that arises from unfavorable social comparisons can cause physical and mental harm. Essentially, there are three ways to thwart unfavorable income-related comparisons experienced by an individual: to operate on the individual's income or on a characteristic (an attribute) of the individual's income; to operate on the incomes or on a characteristic of the incomes of the individual's comparators; or to modify the individual's social space. The first two approaches feature extensively in the existing literature. The third does not. In this communication, I analyze this third approach, keeping in mind its application as a policy tool for lowering social stress.

Keywords: Social space; Unfavorable income-related comparisons; Low relative income; Low income-based rank; Social stress; Adverse health outcomes; Forming a health-related policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D63 D91 I10 I14 I31 Z18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X24000017
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: The modification of social space as a tool for lowering social stress (2024) Downloads
Working Paper: The Modification of Social Space as a Tool for Lowering Social Stress (2024) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:53:y:2024:i:c:s1570677x24000017

DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101349

Access Statistics for this article

Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten

More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).

 
Page updated 2025-01-09
Handle: RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:53:y:2024:i:c:s1570677x24000017