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Keeping up with the Schmidts: An Empirical Test of Relative Deprivation Theory in the Neighbourhood Context

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dc.creator Knies, Gundi
dc.creator Burgess, Simon M.
dc.creator Propper, Carol
dc.date 2007
dc.date.accessioned 2013-10-16T06:59:56Z
dc.date.available 2013-10-16T06:59:56Z
dc.date.issued 2013-10-16
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/10419/18429
dc.identifier ppn:53498892X
dc.identifier.uri http://koha.mediu.edu.my:8181/xmlui/handle/10419/18429
dc.description We test empirically whether people?s life satisfaction depends on their relative income position in the neighbourhood, drawing on a unique dataset, the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP) matched with micro-marketing indicators of population characteristics. Relative deprivation theory suggests that individuals are happier the better their relative income position in the neighbourhood is. To test this theory we estimate micro-economic happiness models for the years 1994 and 1999 with controls for own income and for neighbourhood income at the zip-code level (roughly 9,000 people). There exist no negative and no statistically significant associations between neighbourhood income and life satisfaction, which refutes relative deprivation theory. If anything, we find positive associations between neighbourhood income and happiness in all cross-sectional models and this is robust to a number of robustness tests, including adding in more controls for neighbourhood quality, changing the outcome variable, and interacting neighbourhood income with indicators that proxy the extent to which individuals may be assumed to interact with their neighbours. We argue that the scale at which we measure neighbourhood characteristics may be too large still to identify the comparison effect sought after.
dc.language eng
dc.publisher Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW) Berlin
dc.relation DIW-Diskussionspapiere 697
dc.rights http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen
dc.subject I31
dc.subject Z1
dc.subject C23
dc.subject ddc:330
dc.subject Life satisfaction
dc.subject Neighbourhood effects
dc.subject Comparison income
dc.subject Reference group
dc.subject Lebenszufriedenheit
dc.subject Sozialer Status
dc.subject Einkommensverteilung
dc.subject Nachbarschaftsökonomie
dc.subject Deutschland
dc.title Keeping up with the Schmidts: An Empirical Test of Relative Deprivation Theory in the Neighbourhood Context
dc.type doc-type:workingPaper


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