Inequality and happiness: are Europeans and Americans different?
Inequality and happiness: are Europeans and Americans different?
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DOI：
10.1016/j.jpubeco.2003.07.006
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发表时间：
2004-08-01
影响因子：
9.8
通讯作者：
MacCulloch, R
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Alesina, A;Di Tella, R;MacCulloch, R
我们研究了社会不平等程度对个人幸福感的影响，使用了123，668个关于“幸福”的调查问题的答案。我们发现，当不平等程度较高时，即使在控制了个人收入、大量个人特征以及年份和国家（或者在美国，州）假人之后，个人报告自己快乐的倾向也较低。然而，在欧洲，这种影响在统计上比在美国更精确。此外，我们发现各组之间存在显著差异。在欧洲，穷人和政治左派对不平等感到不满;而在美国，穷人和左派的幸福与不平等无关。有趣的是，在美国，富人对不平等感到不安。比较各大洲，我们发现欧洲的左翼人士比美国的左翼人士更受不平等的伤害。欧洲的穷人比美国的穷人更关心不平等，这种影响在规模上很大，但只有在10%的水平上才有意义。我们认为，这些发现与美国人一直生活在一个移动的社会的看法（不一定是现实）是一致的，在这个社会中，个人的努力可以使人们在收入阶梯上上下移动，而欧洲人认为他们生活在一个移动的社会。(C)2003年由Elsevier B. V.出版
We study the effect of the level of inequality in society on individual well-being using a total of 123,668 answers to a survey question about "happiness". We find that individuals have a lower tendency to report themselves happy when inequality is high, even after controlling for individual income, a large set of personal characteristics, and year and country (or, in the case of the US, state) dummies. The effect, however, is more precisely defined statistically in Europe than in the US. In addition, we find striking differences across groups. In Europe, the poor and those on the left of the political spectrum are unhappy about inequality; whereas in the US the happiness of the poor and of those on the left is uncorrelated with inequality. Interestingly, in the US, the rich are bothered by inequality. Comparing across continents, we find that left-wingers in Europe are more hurt by inequality than left-wingers in the US. And the poor in Europe are more concerned with inequality than the poor in America, an effect that is large in terms of size but is only significant at the 10% level. We argue that these findings are consistent with the perception (not necessarily the reality) that Americans have been living in a mobile society, where individual effort can move people up and down the income ladder, while Europeans believe that they live in less mobile societies. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.