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

参照组中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其他人的生活条件进行比较时，他/她有一种不平等的感觉。与参照人的社会比较，而不是抽象的集体，构成了不平等衡量的基础。它们也是不平等和主观幸福感之间的直接联系。然而，尽管通过参照组进行社会比较这一相对概念受到重视，但目前在经验性社会经济研究中几乎没有证据表明准确的参照组的划分。以前，研究只使用参照范畴的低级概念(与抽象的集体相比)，而不使用参照团体(需要与团体成员进行个人互动)。个别参照组的经验描述在理论和方法上都具有挑战性，这是迄今使用诸如参照系等效力较小的概念的主要原因之一。因此，我们建议勾勒出一个框架，并开发一种调查工具，在方法上准确地界定各个参照组。提出了多学科的社会科学视角来开发该仪器。社交网络研究领域的一种经过经验验证的工具--所谓的名字生成器--将被改装成我们的目的。然后将使用名称生成器来创建个性化的参照组，并通过使用与主观幸福感相关的回归分析来对照标准参照组进行评估。此外，来自个性化参照组的感知不平等度量将与客观不平等度量和其他基于感知的不平等度量进行测试，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，并使用回归分析中的个体特定效应进行分析，以控制时间不变的未观察到的特征。然而，固定效应规范不允许将观察到的时不变回归变量(如性别)纳入估计方程。因此，还将使用随机效果规范。由于后一种模型强加了更强的假设，而这些假设往往得不到满足，固定效应模型和随机效应模型都将以一种比较的方式涵盖。我们建议将泰国作为本研究的实证部分的案例研究。在新兴经济体和发展中经济体，不平等具有很高的相关性，但研究不足。泰国是一个新兴经济体，受到严重形式的不平等的困扰，结构性转型加剧了这种不平等。此外，泰国社会是高度集体主义的。任何事情都是通过同龄人的眼睛进行调解的。因此，泰国是研究不平等-福祉关系中个体参考群体构成的理想选择。

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.