Subjective well-being (SWB) is generally argued to rise with relative income. However, direct evidence is scarce on … whether and how intensively individuals undertake income comparisons, to whom they relate, and what they perceive their … relative income to be. In this paper, novel data with direct information on income comparison intensity and perceived relative …

income comparisons against a wide range of potential comparison groups, enabling us to investigate a broader range of … subjects to report (a) how their income compares to various groups, such a co-workers, friends, and neighbours, and (b) how … important these income comparisons are to them. We find substantial gender differences, with income comparisons being much …

variations in the underlying income type substantially affect tests of the relationship between life satisfaction, income rank …Theory suggests that subjective well-being is affected by income comparisons and adaptation to income. Empirical tests …, reference income, and income adaptation. Models simultaneously controlling for income and income rank as well as models with a …

A series of studies have suggested that changes in others' income may be perceived differently in post-transition and …' income divide the German nation. We find that the neighbourhood income effect for West Germany is negative (which is in line … with the ‘relative income' hypothesis) and slightly more marked in neighbourhoods that may be assumed to be places where …

satisfaction, though only for some time, whereas forced job changes do not affect life satisfaction clearly. Using plant closures … satisfaction with family life. By investigating people's lives beyond their workplaces, our study complements research on the well …

Despite lower incomes the self-employed often report higher job satisfaction. But this increased job satisfaction only … sometimes translates into higher life satisfaction, likely due to the heterogeneous nature of self-employment. By distinguishing … different types of self-employment, this paper sheds light onto why some self-employeds even report lower life satisfaction …

In this study the relation between satisfaction with life and affluent income is analyzed by using cross-sectional and … effects social treadmill has on life satisfaction for humans with high income. A key result of the fixed-effect-regression is … the following: There is a significant effect relative income has on the contentment with life for affluent people, whereas …

Drawing on the distinction between envy and signaling effects in income comparison, this paper uses 307 …,465 observations for subjective well-being and its covariates from Germany, 1990-2009, to study whether the nature of income comparison … has changed in the process of economic development, and how such changes are related to changes in the nature of income …

German SOEP micro data. Besides income as traditional indicator for material well-being, we include health as a proxy for …-being distribution has decreased over time. Moreover, health as well as life satisfaction contribute quite substantially to … nonmaterial quality of life as well as self-reported satisfaction with life as dimensions. We find that one third of the German …