An Experimental Investigation of the Impact of Absolute and Relative Inequalities on Individual Satisfaction

Jérémy Celse

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2017, vol. 18, issue 4, No 1, 939-958

Abstract: Abstract Whereas recent evidences suggest absolute inequalities (i.e. inequalities between agents’ income measured in absolute terms) and relative inequalities (i.e. inequalities captured by the ratio between agents’ income) to have different cognitive implications, econometric models consider both measures as interchangeable when referring to individual satisfaction. Do income inequalities measured both on relative and absolute terms lead to the same effect on individual satisfaction? We implement an experimental protocol so as to investigate the impact of income inequalities on individual satisfaction. By implementing different treatments, we disentangle the impact of absolute income inequalities from the impact of relative income inequalities on individual satisfaction. We observe that individual satisfaction is significantly and negatively correlated to absolute income inequalities. Relative inequalities seem to have no effect on individual satisfaction.

Keywords: Subjective well-being; Income inequality; Self-report; Experimental economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C9 D6 I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10902-016-9757-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:jhappi:v:18:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s10902-016-9757-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... fe/journal/10902/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-016-9757-6

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Happiness Studies is currently edited by Antonella Delle Fave

More articles in Journal of Happiness Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().