Top incomes and subjective well-being

Michał Brzeziński

No 471, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: We use data from the World Wealth \& Income Database, the European Values Surveys and World Values Surveys to estimate the relationship between top income shares and subjective well-being in a sample of 35 countries observed between 1980s and 2010s (139 surveys and more than 200,000 respondents). Results show that top 1\% income shares are positively associated with happiness, but not with life satisfaction. The effect is present in a subsample of Western countries. We discuss possible explanations for the positive association between top income shares and happiness.

Keywords: top incomes; subjective well-being; life satisfaction; happiness; income inequality; World Wealth \& Income Database. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2018-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap
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Related works:
Journal Article: Top incomes and subjective well-being (2019)
Working Paper: Top incomes and subjective well-being (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2018-471

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