BACKGROUND
A classic debate concerns whether absolute or relative income is more salient. Absolute values resources as constant across time and place while relative contextualizes one’s hierarchical location in the distribution of a time and place.

OBJECTIVE
This study investigates specifically whether absolute income or relative income matters more for health and well-being.

METHODS
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.

RESULTS
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.

CONCLUSIONS
Relative income has far greater predictive validity than absolute income for self-reported health and well-being.



中文翻译：

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美国自我报告的健康和福祉的相对收入与绝对收入的预测有效性测试（作者：David Brady、Michaela Curran、Richard Carpiano）

背景
一个经典的争论是绝对收入和相对收入哪个更重要。绝对值将资源视为跨时间和地点的恒定值，而相对值则将一个人在时间和地点分布中的层次位置置于上下文中。

目的
这项研究专门调查了绝对收入还是相对收入对健康和福祉更重要。

方法
我们利用美国的更高质量的收入指标和多种健康和福祉成果来利用人内、年龄内和时间内的变化。利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、健康状况不佳、心理困扰和生活满意度的三向固定效应模型。

结果
对于所有四种结果，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会与零重叠。相比之下，绝对收入的置信区间大多与零重叠，并且其系数有时会以错误的方向符号。各种稳健性检查支持这些结果。

结论
对于自我报告的健康和福祉，相对收入比绝对收入具有更高的预测有效性。