Individual and intra-household positionality in Vietnam

C. Leigh Anderson, Katelyn Stahley and Alison C. Cullen

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2014, vol. 49, issue C, 26-34

Abstract: We contribute new individual and intra-household findings to the literature on positionality – the degree to which an individual's perceptions of well-being are influenced by his or her income or consumption relative to others – using primary data from Vietnam. In addition to a rich field setting for testing social preferences, we interviewed male and female spouses separately providing novel gender disaggregated data and intra-household measures. We find that income is positional for two-thirds of the respondents, with a fifth willing to continue foregoing absolute income to maintain their relative position. Unlike earlier results, we find that women are more positional on average than men. Our results suggest that one's sensitivity to positionality is related to changes in one's relative position over time; respondents reporting a higher standard of living at the time of marriage were associated with a higher degree of positionality. We find an association between accord in a couple's positionality and the degree to which wives exercise decision making authority in the household.

Keywords: Positionality; Social preferences; Gender; Intra-household; Development; Vietnam (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804314000159
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:soceco:v:49:y:2014:i:c:p:26-34

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2014.02.004

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().