Brady David, Curran Michaela, Carpiano Richard M
University of California, Riverside, USA, and WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany.
Centers for Disease Control, USA.
Demogr Res. 2023 Jan-Jun;48:775-808. doi: 10.4054/demres.2023.48.26. Epub 2023 May 16.
A classic debate concerns whether absolute or relative income is more salient. values resources as constant across time and place while contextualizes one's hierarchical location in the distribution of a time and place.
This study investigates specifically whether absolute income or relative income matters more for health and well-being.
We exploit within-person, within-age, and within-time variation with higher-quality income measures and multiple health and well-being outcomes in the United States. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Cross-National Equivalent File, we estimate three-way fixed effects models of self-rated health, poor health, psychological distress, and life satisfaction.
For all four outcomes, relative income has much larger standardized coefficients than absolute income. Robustly, the confidence intervals for relative income do not overlap with zero. By contrast, absolute income mostly has confidence intervals that overlap with zero, and its coefficient is occasionally signed in the wrong direction. A variety of robustness checks support these results.
Relative income has far greater predictive validity than absolute income for self-reported health and well-being.
Compared to earlier studies, this study provides a more rigorous comparison and test of the predictive validity of absolute and relative income that is uniquely conducted with data on the United States. This informs debates on income measurement, the sources of health and well-being, and inequalities generally. Plausibly, these results can guide any analysis that includes income in models.
一个经典的争论是绝对收入还是相对收入更显著。绝对收入将资源视为在不同时间和地点都是恒定的，而相对收入则将一个人在特定时间和地点的分配中的等级位置情境化。
本研究具体调查绝对收入还是相对收入对健康和幸福更为重要。
我们利用美国高质量收入测量以及多种健康和幸福结果的个体内、年龄内和时间内的变化。使用收入动态面板研究和跨国等效文件，我们估计了自评健康、健康不佳、心理困扰和生活满意度的三向固定效应模型。
对于所有四个结果，相对收入的标准化系数比绝对收入大得多。稳健地，相对收入的置信区间不与零重叠。相比之下，绝对收入的置信区间大多与零重叠，其系数偶尔方向错误。各种稳健性检验支持这些结果。
对于自我报告的健康和幸福，相对收入的预测效度远高于绝对收入。
与早期研究相比，本研究对绝对收入和相对收入的预测效度进行了更严格的比较和检验，这是在美国数据上独特进行的。这为关于收入测量、健康和幸福的来源以及一般不平等的辩论提供了信息。合理地说，这些结果可以指导任何在模型中纳入收入的分析。
