OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers
This series is designed to make available to a wider readership selected labour market, social policy and migration studies prepared for use within the OECD. Authorship is usually collective, but principal writers are named. The papers are generally available only in their original language - English or French - with a summary in the other.
- ISSN: 1815199X (online)
- https://doi.org/10.1787/1815199X
Income Distribution and Subjective Happiness
A Survey
This survey summarises the insights that the new literature based on subjective data has shed on the
issue of income inequality and income comparisons. It reviews the various channels that relate income
distribution and subjective well-being. It considers the welfare effect of income gaps in general, both in
terms of the difference between individual income and the income of some relevant other, and with regard
to generic income distribution.
Concerning income comparisons, the general lesson is that it is useful to distinguish status effects
from signal effects: income comparisons hurt, but they may also increase life satisfaction when they mean
good news; this is all the more likely as the reference group is made of people who most likely share a
common destiny.
Concerning income distribution in general, the relationship with subjective well-being is generally
found to be negative, with higher societal inequality being associated with lower subjective well-being.
There are many possible pathways which may lie behind such an empirical finding. The first type of
aversion to income inequality derives from self-centred motives, such as risk-aversion and prospects for
upward mobility (POUM). Both stem from a perception of the income distribution as a ladder that one
risks falling from or has a chance to climb. Attitudes to inequality are also sometimes found to be based on
other-regarding preferences such as fairness and reciprocity, which are generally independent of the
income position of the individual himself. An important point is that subjective attitudes are the joint
output of preferences and beliefs concerning income distribution in society. The demand for redistribution
is higher whenever people have strong preferences for equal outcomes or opportunities but believe that in
the society in which they live, outcomes or opportunities are actually not equal. As illustrated by several
studies, preferences and beliefs concerning income distribution are context dependent and are thus
heterogeneous across countries and groups of the population.
Keywords: income distribution, demand for income distribution, income comparisons, subjective well-being
JEL:
H24: Public Economics / Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue / Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies;
C23: Mathematical and Quantitative Methods / Single Equation Models; Single Variables / Single Equation Models; Single Variables: Panel Data Models; Spatio-temporal Models;
I31: Health, Education, and Welfare / Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty / General Welfare; Well-Being;
D64: Microeconomics / Welfare Economics / Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers;
D63: Microeconomics / Welfare Economics / Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement;
D61: Microeconomics / Welfare Economics / Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
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