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 …

ongoing discussion of the relationship between life satisfaction and income. The panel property of the data makes it possible … to study also the impact on satisfaction from income changes as well as the impact from acceleration in income and … the survey to the next. We find a strong impact from the level of income in all countries, an impact from change and …

While there is mounting evidence that large income shocks, e.g. in the form of a job loss, may impact health and … mortality, little evidence exist on the potential relationship between sustained income volatility, keeping average lifetime … income constant, and health. This paper exploits rich survey data on the near-elderly in Canada paired with their …

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 …

to (i) the level of her income in absolute terms, and (ii) the level of her income relative to other people in her … country. The main findings are that (i) both absolute and relative income are positively and significantly correlated with … happiness, (ii) quantitatively, changes in relative income have much larger effects on happiness than do changes in absolute …

We discuss and compare five measures of individual well-being, namely income, an objective composite well-being index …, a measure of subjective well-being, equivalent income, and a well-being measure based on the von Neumann …

-described by four domains: job or daily activities, social contacts and family, health, and income. Among the four domains, social …. Income has the lowest impact. As in other work, we find that American response styles differ from the Dutch in that Americans … inclined to stay in the middle of the scale. Although for both Americans and the Dutch, income is the least important …

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 …