IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/ecdecc/doi10.1086-716056.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Income Improves Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • M. Alloush
  • S. Wu

Abstract

This paper estimates the causal impact of income on life satisfaction for a broad sample of individuals in a developing country. Using a large and representative panel survey of South African residents, we find that receipt of the Older Person’s Grant—a means-tested cash transfer that is given to residents age 60 and older regardless of labor force status—increases several household-level measures of economic well-being, resulting in a large and significant increase in subjective well-being. Specifically, the average 20% increase in per capita household income due to this grant increases life satisfaction by approximately 0.2 points, a large effect that extends to all members of the household. The discontinuity in the eligibility of the Older Person’s Grant provides a reliable causal estimate of the effect of income on life satisfaction that is larger than ordinary least squares estimates.

Suggested Citation

  • M. Alloush & S. Wu, 2023. "Income Improves Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from South Africa," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 71(2), pages 485-517.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:ecdecc:doi:10.1086/716056
    DOI: 10.1086/716056
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/716056
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/716056
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/716056?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jinguang Guo & Chenglai Yang, 2024. "Sustainable Consumption and Residents’ Happiness: An Empirical Analysis Based on the 2021 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS2021)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(20), pages 1-22, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:ecdecc:doi:10.1086/716056. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/EDCC .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.