Sitting in the same boat: Subjective well-being and social comparison after an extreme weather event

Kati Krähnert and Svenja Fluhrer
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Kati Kraehnert

VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: How does subjective well-being depend on the fate of others when a covariate shock strikes? In this paper, we address this question by providing novel evidence on the impact of shock-induced damages experienced by individuals and their reference group on life satisfaction. We do so by examining the case of pastoralists in Mongolia that faced a oncein-50-years winter disaster. Our identification strategy exploits the quasi-experimental nature of the extreme event. The empirical analysis builds on a detailed household panel survey, which we complement with aggregated climate data and historic livestock census data. Results show that exposure to the extreme event significantly and strongly reduces subjective well-being even 4-5 years after the event occurred. The negative shock impact is amplified by observing peers doing economically worse. Similarly, exposure to the extreme event increases the perceived inequality among households with assets at risk. We argue that the event increases sectoral disparities between pastoralists and households not engaged in agriculture.

Keywords: extreme weather event; pastoralism; self-reported shock; socialcomparison; subjective well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I30 O13 O15 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-hap
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/242379/1/vfs-2021-pid-49601.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Sitting in the same boat: Subjective well-being and social comparison after an extreme weather event (2022)
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:zbw:vfsc21:242379

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().