Income and happiness across Europe: Do reference values matter?

Income and happiness across Europe: Do reference values matter?

Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS), we examine the link between income and subjective well-being. We find that, for the whole sample of nineteen European countries, although income is positively correlated with both happiness and life satisfaction, reference income exerts a negative effect on individual wellbeing. Thus our results lend support to both the absolute and relative inc...

Income inequality and happiness.

Using General Social Survey data from 1972 to 2008, we found that Americans were on average happier in the years with less national income inequality than in the years with more national income inequality. We further demonstrated that this inverse relation between income inequality and happiness was explained by perceived fairness and general trust. That is, Americans trusted other people less ...

Income, Leisure, and Happiness

Income disparities and convergence across regions of Central Europe

This paper deals with the analysis of regional income disparities of the net disposable income of households (in Euro per inhabitant) across the regions of Central Europe (Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Germany) during the period 2000-2013. The analysis deals with the 82 NUTS 2 (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) regions and is based on the concept of sigm...

Income Inequality Do Exchange Rate Regimes Matter?

In a recent report by the United Nations Development Programme it was argued that the two corner solutions dictated under the Washington Consensus have had adverse impacts on inequality, for they put developing economies at the risk of currency crises and large currency devaluations. The present paper thus intends to extend the discussion on optimal exchange rate regimes to the issue of income ...