Relative Income, Subjective Wellbeing and the Easterlin Paradox: Intra- and Inter-national Comparisons

Arthur Grimes and Marc Reinhardt
Additional contact information
Marc Reinhardt: University of Bologna

Chapter Chapter 4 in The Economics of Happiness, 2019, pp 85-105 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract We extend the Easterlin Paradox (EP) literature in two key respects. First, we test whether income comparisons matter for subjective wellbeing both when own incomes are compared with others within the country (intra-national) and with incomes across countries (inter-national). Second, we test whether these effects differ by settlement-type (rural through to large cities) and by country-type (developed and transitional). We confirm the intra-national EP prediction that subjective wellbeing is unchanged by an equi-proportionate rise in intra-country incomes across all developed country settlement-types. This is also the case for rural areas in transitional countries but not for larger settlements in those countries. Inter-national income comparisons are important for people’s subjective wellbeing across all country-settlement-types. Policy-makers must therefore consider their citizens’ incomes in an international context and cannot restrict attention solely to the intra-national income distribution.

Keywords: Easterlin paradox; Subjective wellbeing; International income comparisons; Rural-urban wellbeing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:sprchp:978-3-030-15835-4_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030158354

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-15835-4_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().