A rather densely-argued “academic paper”:http://www.brookings.org/dybdocroot/gs/events/paysatisfaction.pdf presented at the Brookings Institute has been summarised by “ScienceDaily”:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/031003060615.htm – ‘our rank position within an organisation has a bigger effect on our happiness within that job than the happiness generated by our actual level of pay’.
Pretty uncontroversial I would have thought but this suggests that, for example, it might be better for a country to risk a lower standard of living if it could also produce a more equal standard.
Irwin M. Stelzer in a recent article about European vs American attitudes to income equality (referenced in “last week’s blog posting”:https://blog.org/archives/cat_current_affairs_europe.html#000892) casts doubt on an earlier study that showed this effect – I hope this latest, more large scale study will put an end to remaining doubts on this point.
