1 option
Feeling Poor, Feeling Rich, Or Feeling Middle-Class : An Empirical Investigation / Maurizio Bussolo.
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (formerly "World Bank E-Library Publications") Available online
View online- Format:
- Book
- Government document
- Author/Creator:
- Bussolo, Maurizio.
- Series:
- Policy research working papers.
- World Bank e-Library.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Consumption.
- Income Distribution.
- Inequality.
- Living Standards.
- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth.
- Middle Class.
- Perception.
- Poverty.
- Poverty Reduction.
- Psychology.
- Social Development.
- Subjective Ranking.
- Well-Being.
- Local Subjects:
- Consumption.
- Income Distribution.
- Inequality.
- Living Standards.
- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth.
- Middle Class.
- Perception.
- Poverty.
- Poverty Reduction.
- Psychology.
- Social Development.
- Subjective Ranking.
- Well-Being.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (33 pages)
- Other Title:
- Feeling Poor, Feeling Rich, Or Feeling Middle-Class
- Place of Publication:
- Washington, D.C. : The World Bank, 2020.
- System Details:
- data file
- Summary:
- Based on their objective economic situation and comparing with their peers, individuals form perceptions of their economic position in a society. Data from the three waves of the Life in Transition surveys of European countries show that these perceptions systematically deviate from the rankings obtained using consumption levels. People position themselves in the middle ranks in larger numbers than those who are in the middle ranks according to their consumption levels. Correspondingly, many people who objectively are classified in the top, richest, or bottom, poorest, ranks subjectively feel that they are in the middle class. This puzzling "bunching in the middle" is the focus of this paper. Explanations are tested and discarded that consider subjective perceptions as misperceptions or the result of other mistakes due to data limitations (such as tail bias). The paper concludes that rather than reflecting a subjective assessment of the distribution of welfare, subjective rankings reveal subjective economic well-being. The paper show that monetary consumption is a strong predictor of subjective economic well-being, but that the latter is influenced by many other factors, including economic security, proxied by employment status or other measures of human capital, such as health and education. These findings have policy relevance, since redistribution measures aiming at simply protecting consumption levels may not be sufficient to restore the economic well-being provided by having full-time secure types of employment.
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.