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Keeping up with the Joneses by finding a better-paid job - The effect of relative income on job mobility

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  • Kronenberg, Kristin
  • Kronenberg, Tobias

Abstract

It has been shown that a person’s relative income – compared to a reference group – has a negative impact on self-reported happiness. This suggests that people who aim at increasing their happiness should try to find a better-paid job if their relative income is low. In this paper we study this hypothesis by estimating the effect of relative income on job mobility, using a dataset containing information on roughly four million Dutch employees. We consider three different reference groups: people who live in the same neighborhood, people who work for the same employer, and people who share certain demographic characteristics. Our findings suggest that workers compare their own income to that of their neighbors, and low relative income is associated with higher job mobility. We conclude that low relative income (compared to the neighbors) reduces workers’ happiness, and workers react to this by finding a new job which may offer the prospect of higher pay.

Suggested Citation

  • Kronenberg, Kristin & Kronenberg, Tobias, 2011. "Keeping up with the Joneses by finding a better-paid job - The effect of relative income on job mobility," MPRA Paper 29426, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:29426
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Thorstein Veblen, 1899. "Mr. Cummings's Strictures on "The Theory of the Leisure Class"," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 8(1), pages 106-106.
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    4. Erzo F. P. Luttmer, 2005. "Neighbors as Negatives: Relative Earnings and Well-Being," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 963-1002.
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    12. McBride, Michael, 2001. "Relative-income effects on subjective well-being in the cross-section," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 251-278, July.
    13. Kronenberg, Kristin & Carree, Martin, 2010. "Job and residential mobility in the Netherlands: the influence of human capital, household composition and location," MPRA Paper 25840, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Ada, 2005. "Income and well-being: an empirical analysis of the comparison income effect," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(5-6), pages 997-1019, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Stefan Jestl & Mathias Moser & Anna Katharina Raggl, 2021. "Cannot keep up with the Joneses: how relative deprivation pushes internal migration in Austria," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 49(2), pages 210-231, November.
    2. Battisti, Michele, 2017. "High wage workers and high wage peers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 47-63.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Relative income; job mobility; happiness; social status;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

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