Where the Streets Have a Name: Income Comparisons in the US

Abel Brodeur and Sarah Flèche

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: This paper analyses how neighbors' income affect agents' well-being using unprecedented data from the BRFSS and the City of Somerville. We conduct a multi-scale approach at the county, ZIP code and street-levels and find that the association between well-being and neighbors' income follows an inverted U-shaped pattern in the size of the area. We find a negative relationship between well-being and neighbors' income in the county of residence, but the opposite at the ZIP code-level. Our results are consistent with the fact that agents enjoy living in a rich ZIP code but also having poor faraway neighbors since they have preferences for high social status. We test explicitly this interpretation by including amenities and the relative rank in the local income distribution in our model. At the street-level, we find a negative association between neighbors' income and self-reported well-being indicating the presence of income comparisons between very close neighbors.

Keywords: Income comparisons; rank; relative utility; social interactions; social status; well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C25 D00 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Where the streets have a name: income comparisons in the US (2013)
Working Paper: Where the Streets Have a Name: Income Comparisons in the US (2013)
Working Paper: Where the Streets Have a Name: Income Comparisons in the US (2013)
Working Paper: Where the Streets Have a Name: Income Comparisons in the US (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1196

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