Socioeconomic Inequality in Happiness in the United States

Abstract

This paper applies a recently developed method of ranking socioeconomic inequality in health to ranking U.S. happiness from 1994 to 2012 using the GSS data. We also compare happiness between subgroups as decomposed by gender, race, and age. We establish and test a monotone condition of happiness – a richer person is likely to be happier. Under the monotone condition, standard tools of welfare and inequality ranking can be applied straightforwardly.

Citation

Chen, S. and Zheng, B. (2014), "Socioeconomic Inequality in Happiness in the United States", Economic Well-Being and Inequality: Papers from the Fifth ECINEQ Meeting (Research on Economic Inequality, Vol. 22), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 217-236. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1049-258520140000022006