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Income inequality and well-being in the U.S.: evidence of geographic-scale- and measure-dependence

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  • John Ifcher

    (Santa Clara University)

  • Homa Zarghamee

    (Barnard College)

  • Carol Graham

    (Brookings Institution)

Abstract

U.S. income inequality has risen dramatically in recent decades. Researchers consistently find that greater income inequality measured at the state or national level is associated with diminished subjective well-being (SWB) in the U.S. We conduct the first multi-scale analysis (i.e., at the ZIP-code, MSA, and state levels) of the inequality-SWB relationship using SWB data from the U.S. Gallup Healthways Well-Being Index and income inequality data from the American Community Survey. We use the rich set of SWB measures afforded by the dataset (evaluative, positive hedonic, and negative hedonic) to examine the consistency of the relationship. We find that the relationship is both scale-dependent and measure-dependent: income inequality is SWB-diminishing in large regions for all measures, SWB-diminishing in small regions for negative hedonic measures, and SWB-improving in small regions for evaluative and positive hedonic measures. Lastly, we find that taking all regions together, the net relationship between income inequality and SWB is negative for all hedonic measures.

Suggested Citation

  • John Ifcher & Homa Zarghamee & Carol Graham, 2019. "Income inequality and well-being in the U.S.: evidence of geographic-scale- and measure-dependence," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 17(3), pages 415-434, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:joecin:v:17:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10888-018-9404-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s10888-018-9404-z
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    1. Income Inequality and Well-Being in the U.S.: Evidence of Geographic-Scale- and Measure-Dependence
      by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2016-09-07 22:02:07

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    1. Ifcher, John & Zarghamee, Homa & Graham, Carol, 2018. "Local neighbors as positives, regional neighbors as negatives: Competing channels in the relationship between others’ income, health, and happiness," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 263-276.
    2. Paolo Liberati & Giuliano Resce, 2022. "Regional Well-Being and its Inequality in the OECD Member Countries," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(3), pages 671-700, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Subjective well-being; Income inequality; Happiness; Distribution of income; Health; Scale-dependence; Measure-dependence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D3 - Microeconomics - - Distribution
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics

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