Another Avenue for Anatomy of Income Comparisons: Evidence from Hypothetical Choice Experiments

We present an original, large-scale, Internet-based survey that investigates how comparison attitudes vary by reference groups and individual comparison benchmarks. In this survey, respondents are presented with alternative combinations of hypothetical monthly income amounts, both for themselves and various reference persons -i.e., the average citizen in Japan; persons of a specific age, gender, and level of educational attainment; and friends and colleagues. From data on respondents' choices of preferred income scenario, we find that those who regard neighbors as their comparison benchmark have the strongest intensity of relative utility and that those whose comparison benchmark is colleagues do not compare intensively. We also find that respondents tend to be altruistic toward those with lower incomes than themselves and toward the elderly, but tend to be jealous of males and those with higher education or more income. Respondents who self-identify colleagues as their reference persons are uniformly jealous of the rivals, while those who identify friends as their reference persons are sometimes altruistic toward them.