We estimate household equivalence scales using income satisfaction data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. We extend … previous studies applying this approach by taking reference income into account. This allows separating needs-based from … reference effects in the determination of income satisfaction. We show that this adjustment helps to overcome a bias causing an …

issues for the exemplary case of Germany that suffers from high unemployment among low-skilled workers and rising wage … burden by about EUR 4 billion per year, while poor households’ income rises only by EUR 1.1 billion per year. With pure wage … subsidies, the government can ensure more favorable employment and income effects. Combining a minimum wage with a wage subsidy …

We reexamine the claim that the effect of income on subjective well-being suffers from a systematic downward bias if … one ignores that higher income is typically associated with more work effort. We analyze this claim using German panel … do not find evidence that leaving working hours out of the analysis leads to an underestimation of the income effect …

We estimate household equivalence scales using income satisfaction data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. We extend … previous studies applying this approach by taking reference income into account. This allows separating needs-based from … reference effects in the determination of income satisfaction. We show that this adjustment helps to overcome a bias causing an …