| 来源类型 | Working Paper |
| 规范类型 | 报告 |
| DOI | 10.3386/w8198 |
| 来源ID | Working Paper 8198 |
| Inequality and Happiness: Are Europeans and Americans Different? | |
| Alberto Alesina; Rafael Di Tella; Robert MacCulloch | |
| 发表日期 | 2001-04-01 |
| 出版年 | 2001 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | The answer to the question posed in the title is 'yes.' Using a total of 128,106 answers to a survey question about happiness,' we find that there is a large, negative and significant effect of inequality on happiness in Europe but not in the US. There are two potential explanations. First, Europeans prefer more equal societies (inequality belongs in the utility function for Europeans but not for Americans). Second, social mobility is (or is perceived to be) higher in the US so being poor is not seen as affecting future income. We test these hypotheses by partitioning the sample across income and ideological lines. There is evidence of inequality generated' unhappiness in the US only for a sub-group of rich leftists. In Europe inequality makes the poor unhappy, as well as the leftists. This favors the hypothesis that inequality affects European happiness because of their lower social mobility (since no preference for equality exists amongst the rich or the right). The results help explain the greater popular demand for government to fight inequality in Europe relative to the US. |
| URL | https://www.nber.org/papers/w8198 |
| 来源智库 | National Bureau of Economic Research (United States) |
| 引用统计 | |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/565796 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Alberto Alesina,Rafael Di Tella,Robert MacCulloch. Inequality and Happiness: Are Europeans and Americans Different?. 2001. |
| 条目包含的文件 | ||||||
| 文件名称/大小 | 资源类型 | 版本类型 | 开放类型 | 使用许可 | ||
| w8198.pdf（3144KB） | 智库出版物 | 限制开放 | CC BY-NC-SA | 浏览 | ||
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