Geographic Reference Income and the Subjective Wellbeing of Australians

This study’s methodology takes advantage of panel-data modelling to show that unobserved individual heterogeneity is in fact correlated with reference income, but on curbing its impacts through the inclusion of fixed-effects we fi nd that there is still a positive relationship between reference income and subjective wellbeing at the neighbourhood level. However, we detect no relationship at the region-wide level. Additionally, the subjective wellbeing relationship is the same no matter an individual’s rank in the distributi on of incomes within an area. The neighbourhood wellbeing relationship has implications for policies addressing residential segregation and social mixing.
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research