People care about their relative standing in society and therefore compare themselves to relevant others. Empirical findings suggest that there are concerns for relative standing for different goods and life domains such as income, cars, attractiveness, and supervisor’s praise. Even education has been mentioned as having a (partially) positional character. However, there has been only small consideration of education as a positional good in the empirical literature so far. Based on the literature on positional concerns and the role of education on relative position, I use German panel data to investigate the relationship between education and life satisfaction beyond the effect education might have through other variables such as income, health, or occupational prestige. Additionally, I consider the possibility that the consumption of education is subject to positional concerns. I discover a positive relationship between education and life satisfaction, indicating that education has a consumption component. Moreover, the relationship depends on the distribution of particular levels of education, suggesting that education has a positional character.

人们关心自己在社会上的相对地位，因此将自己与其他人进行比较。实证结果表明，人们对不同商品和生活领域的相对地位存在担忧，例如收入，汽车，吸引力和上司的赞美。甚至教育也被认为具有（部分）位置特征。但是，到目前为止，在经验文献中仅很少考虑将教育作为一种定位商品。根据有关位置问题和教育在相对位置上的作用的文献，我使用德国面板数据研究教育与生活满意度之间的关系，而教育与生活满意度之间的关系超出了教育可能通过其他变量（例如收入，健康或职业声望）产生的影响。另外，我认为教育消费有可能受到职位关注。我发现教育与生活满意度之间存在正相关关系，这表明教育具有消费成分。而且，这种关系取决于特定教育水平的分布，这表明教育具有位置特征。