Relative Income Status Within Marriage and Subjective Well-Being in China: Evidence from Observational and Quasi-Experimental Data

Hania Fei Wu ()
Additional contact information
Hania Fei Wu: Fudan University

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2021, vol. 22, issue 1, No 21, 447-466

Abstract: Abstract The importance of social comparison has been verified extensively in happiness studies. However, questions about “whether people compare with intimate others” have not been answered satisfactorily. By analyzing a nationally representative survey data and an original quasi-experimental data from China, the current paper examines the impact of the relative income status within marriage on individuals’ subjective well-being. We find that for both genders, husbands’ higher earnings relative to wives always raise one’s life satisfaction. The beneficiary effect of husbands’ higher income is mostly noticeable for families of medium economic status, while the happiness penalty of wives having higher income appears to be universal for families under all financial conditions. A further causal investigation based on a quasi-experimental vignette design provides confirming evidence on the gendered income inequality impacts and the central role of gender ideology in generating such pattern.

Keywords: Social comparison; Reference group; Life satisfaction; Gender; Quasi-experimental design; Causal inference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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/s10902-020-00237-5 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:22:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s10902-020-00237-5

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

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-020-00237-5

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 ().