%0 Report
        %A Beath, John
%A FitzRoy, Felix
        %T Status, Happiness, and Relative Income
        %D 2007
        %8 2007 Mar
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 2658
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp2658
        %X Models of status based on Frank’s (1985) count of the number of people with lower conspicuous consumption are inconsistent with the extensive empirical literature on happiness and well-being. The alternative approach to consumption interaction which uses some form of relative income has been developed in various contexts. These predict that a representative agent’s well-being will increase with real income or consumption. However, this is again inconsistent with the time-series evidence for advanced economies. In this paper we combine a simple model of relative income with a distribution of ability that correctly predicts both time series results of near constant utility, and the positive, concave cross-sectional relation between income, working time and happiness.
        %K status
%K happiness
%K relative income