published in: Journal of Economic Inequality, 2003, 1 (2), 107-127
In this paper, the concept of Income Satisfaction Inequality is operationalized on the basis of
individual responses to an Income Satisfaction question posed in the German Socio-
Economic Panel (GSOEP). Income satisfaction is the subjective analogue of the objective
income concept and includes objective income inequality as a special case. The paper
introduces a method to decompose Income Satisfaction Inequality according to the
contributions from variables such as income, education, and the number of children. Given
the panel structure of the data, inequality may be attributed partly to permanent individual
circumstances and partly to transitory changes. The paper shows that by far the largest part
of the satisfaction inequality has to be ascribed to unobserved heterogeneity. Distinguishing
between a structural and an unexplained part of inequality we find that income explains the
largest part of structural Income Satisfaction Inequality together with household membership;
for non-working individuals, the age distribution is very relevant as well.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.