Perceptions of inequality through social comparisons and transference on subjective wellbeing: a micro perspective on reference groups

参照组内的社会比较决定了主观幸福感。当一个人将自己的生活条件与他人的生活条件进行比较时，他/她会有一种不平等的感觉。社会比较与参考人，而不是抽象的集体构成不平等措施的基础。它们也是不平等和主观幸福感之间的直接联系。然而，尽管通过参照群体的方式赋予社会比较的相对概念以重要性，但目前在经验性社会经济研究中，关于准确界定参照人群的证据很少。以前的研究只使用参照范畴（相对于抽象的集体）的低等概念，而不是参照群体（需要与群体成员进行个人互动）。对单个参考群体的经验描述在理论上和方法上都具有挑战性，这也是迄今为止使用诸如参考类别等不太有效的概念的主要原因之一。因此，我们建议概述一个框架，并开发一种调查工具，在方法上准确地定义个人参考群体。提出了一个多学科的社会科学视角来开发该工具。一个来自社会网络研究领域的经验证明的工具，即所谓的名称生成器，将适用于我们的目的。然后，名字生成器将用于创建个性化参考组，这些参考组将通过使用与主观幸福感相关的回归分析来评估标准参考类别。此外，来自个性化参考群体的感知不平等措施将与不平等的客观措施和其他基于感知的不平等措施进行测试，以更好地解释主观幸福感。为了分析影响主观幸福感的因素的复杂性，将收集面板数据，并在回归分析中使用个体特定效应来控制时不变的未观察特征。然而，固定效应规范不允许将观察到的时不变回归量（如性别）纳入估计方程。因此，还将使用随机效应规范。由于后一种模型提出了更强的假设，而这些假设往往无法实现，因此将以比较的方式讨论固定效应和随机效应模型。我们建议将泰国作为实证部分的研究案例。不平等与新兴和发展中经济体高度相关，但研究不足。泰国是一个饱受严重不平等困扰的新兴经济体，而结构转型又加剧了这种不平等。此外，泰国社会是高度集体主义的。每件事都是通过同伴的眼光来调解的。因此，泰国是调查不平等-福祉关系中个人参考群体组成的理想选择。

Social comparisons within reference groups determine subjective wellbeing. A person has a perception of inequality when comparing his/her living conditions with those of others. Social comparisons with reference persons instead of abstract collectivities form the basis of inequality measures. They are also the direct link between inequality and subjective wellbeing. However, despite the importance assigned to the relative concept of social comparison by means of reference groups, at present there is little evidence regarding the delineation of the exact reference group of people in empirical socio-economic research. Formerly, research only used the inferior concept of reference categories (comparing to abstract collectivities) instead of reference groups (requiring personal interactions with group members). The empirical delineation of an individual reference group is theoretically and methodologically challenging and is one of the main reasons why so far less potent concepts such as the reference category was used. Therefore, we propose outlining a framework and developing a survey instrument which methodologically accurately defines individual reference groups. A multi-disciplinary social science perspective is proposed for the development of the instrument. An empirically proven instrument from the area of social network research, the so-called name generator, will be adapted for our purpose. The name generator will then be used to create individualized reference groups, which will be assessed against standard reference categories by employing regression analysis relating to subjective wellbeing. Moreover, perceived inequality measures derived from individualized reference groups will be tested against objective measures of inequality and other perception-based measures of inequality to better explain subjective wellbeing. To analyze the complexity of factors influencing subjective wellbeing, panel data will be collected and analyzed using individual-specific effects within regression analysis to control for time-invariant unobserved characteristics. However, a fixed-effects specification does not allow observed time-invariant regressors (such as gender) to be incorporated into the estimating equation. Therefore, a random-effects specification will also be used. As the latter model imposes stronger assumptions which are often not fulfilled, both the fixed- and random-effects models will be covered in a comparative manner. We suggest Thailand as the case study for the empirical part of the research. Inequality is highly relevant, but under-researched, in emerging and developing economies. Thailand is an emerging economy plagued by severe forms of inequality, which are aggravated by structural transformation. Furthermore, Thai society is highly collectivistic. Everything is mediated through the eyes of one's peers. Thus, Thailand is ideal for investigating the composition of individual reference groups within the inequality-wellbeing nexus.