Open Access Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington
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The effects of neighbourhood and workplace income comparisons on subjective wellbeing

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posted on 2021-12-08, 17:08 authored by Noy, Shakked

We investigate how the incomes of a person’s neighbours and coworkers affect her happiness, using survey data on subjective wellbeing linked to unprecedentedly rich administrative data on the characteristics of survey respondents’ peer groups. Linear regressions of subjective wellbeing on peer income variables establish that people care exclusively about their ordinal rank within their peer income distribution, that workplace rank matters much more than neighbourhood rank, and that workplace comparisons are driven primarily by fairness concerns. We confirm that our results reflect a causal effect of peer income by implementing sensitivity analyses, identifying off changes in peer income over time for immobile people, exploiting plausibly exogenous moves between workplaces triggered by mass layoffs, and testing for the effects of unobservable group-level confounders.

History

Copyright Date

2020-01-01

Date of Award

2020-01-01

Publisher

Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington

Rights License

Author Retains Copyright

Degree Discipline

Economics

Degree Grantor

Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington

Degree Level

Masters

Degree Name

Master of Commerce

ANZSRC Type Of Activity code

1 PURE BASIC RESEARCH

Victoria University of Wellington Item Type

Awarded Research Masters Thesis

Language

en_NZ

Victoria University of Wellington School

School of Economics and Finance

Advisors

Sin, Isabelle