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Studies

Akay & Martinsson (2012): study DE 1984

Publication

Author(s):
Akay, A.; Martinsson, P.
Title:
Positional Concerns through the Life Cycle: Evidence from subjective Well-being Data and Survey Experiments.
Source:
IZA Discussion Paper no. 6342, 2012, Bonn, Germany

Investigation

Public
20-79 aged general public, Germany, 1984-2009
Survey name
DE-SOEP 1984-2009
Sample
Selection from general population sample
Respondents
N = 150000
Non Response
Assessment
Interview: face-to-face

Happiness Measure(s) and Distributional Findings

Full text:
Self report on single question:

Taking all things together, how satisfied are you with your life these days? Please answer with the help of this scale. For instance, when you are totally satisfied with your life, please tick '10'. When you are totally unsatisfied with your life, please tick '0'. You may use all values in between to indicate that you are neither totally satisfied nor totally unsatisfied."
10 totally satisfied
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0  totally unsatisfied
Classification:
O-SLW-c-sq-n-11-d

Correlational Findings

Author's label Subject Description Finding Relative income effects by age and reference groups Relative to income of similar people