The Effects of Wealth and Income on Subjective Well-Being and Ill-Being

By B. Headey, M. Wooden. Social Science Research Network, 2004

332 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The accepted view among psychologists and, increasingly, economists is that household income has statistically significant but only small effects on measures of subjective well-being. Income, however, is clearly an imperfect measure of the economic circumstances of households. Using data drawn from the 2002 wave of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, this paper demonstrates that wealth, which can be viewed as providing a degree of economic security, is at least as important to well-being and ill-being as income.

Subfields: Accounting, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/18d04def1f56981c1bb9d3d5f3dcf41abb2f85f5

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Accounting

In Social Psychology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Debt and Subjective Well-being: The Other Side of the Income-Happiness Coin (2016, background): “…significance of income on SWB is important, this endeavor may have led to an inordinate focus on only income (Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002; Diener et al. 2013), rather than the broader construct of economic wealth and its relation to SWB (cf. Headey and Wooden 2004; Howell and Howell 2008).”
Relative Income, Happiness and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles (2008, unknown): “Headey and Wooden (2004) go some way toward to addressing this issue.”
Leisure Time, Leisure Activities, and Happiness in China (2015, background): “On the other hand, those who have received higher education may face high workplace pressure and competition as professionals in their career life (Headey & Wooden, 2004; Veenhoven, 1996; Wang & Wong, 2011).”
Life Satisfaction and Happiness in Turkey (2008, background): “Helliwell (2002) explains international and inter-personal differences in SWB during the last two decades.”
Happiness and Leisure Across Countries: Evidence from International Survey Data (2013, background): “Some previous studies on happiness in developed countries find that education might be negatively associated with the level of happiness (Veenhoven 1996; Headey and Wooden 2004) and people with higher education can feel less happy than people with relatively lower education.”
Household finances and well-being in Australia: An empirical analysis of comparison effects☆ (2016, methodology): “These findings indicate that the results presented in Headey and Wooden (2004) are robust to accounting for individual heterogeneity.”
Time and Money (2009, background): “income of the household, the latter perhaps because income is not a complete substitute for wealth ( Headey and Wooden 2004 ).”
The Effect of Income on General Life Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction (2009, methodology): “Headey and Wooden (2004) use also two separate measures of well-being and ill-being.”
The Relation Between Life Satisfaction and the Material Situation: A Re-Evaluation Using Alternative Measures (2010, background): “work of Headey and his collaborators (Headey and Wooden 2004; Headey et al. 2005, 2008).”
Income and happiness: Evidence, explanations and economic implications (2006, background): “Headey and Wooden (2004) go some way toward addressing this issue.”
Financial Satisfaction in Old Age: A Satisfaction Paradox or a Result of Accumulated Wealth? (2008, methodology): “Self-reports of assets and debts typically suffer from underreporting and high nonresponse (Headey et al., 2005; Headey & Wooden, 2004; Juster et al., 1999), problems that may be even more substantial than those for self-reports of inc me (Hermalin et al., 2002; Radner, 1992).”