TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Beath, John
AU  - FitzRoy, Felix
        TI  - Status, Happiness, and Relative Income
        PY  - 2007/Mar/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 2658
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp2658
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - status
KW  - happiness
KW  - relative income
        ER  -