Abstract :
[en] This paper examines the relationship between household real assets and life satisfaction in Slovakia, using microdata from the 2017 wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). We find a robust positive association between the value of real assets and life satisfaction. To assess whether this relationship is driven by relative, rather than purely absolute, effects, we make use of a unique feature of the Slovak HFCS: interviewer paradata. Specifically, we use interviewers’ assessments of the respondent’s dwelling quality relative to that of nearby homes. These paradata provide a new locally grounded reference point for evaluating positional effects – arguably with greater validity than conventional approaches based on arbitrarily defined comparison groups. We show that real assets function as positional goods, with downward comparisons exerting a stronger influence on well-being than upward ones. We estimate that approximately 7% of the total relationship between real assets and life satisfaction can be attributed to relative concerns.
Funding text :
Open access funding provided by The Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic in cooperation with Centre for Scientific and Technical Information of the Slovak RepublicWe thank seminar participants at the European Central Bank Household Finance and Consumption Network research seminar, Lincoln seminar in Economics and Finance, National Bank of Slovakia research seminar, Slovak Economic Association annual meeting for their useful suggestions and comments. We also thank the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic for granting us access to the interviewer-level data. Most of all, we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their very useful suggestions, which significantly improved the quality of this paper. Zuzana Broke\u0161ov\u00E1 acknowledges financial support from the grant VEGA 1/0660/23. Andrej Cupak acknowledges financial support from the grant APVV 20-0359. Marian Rizov acknowledges financial support from the grant APVV 22-0442. The views and results presented in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official opinions of the affiliated institutions. Any remaining errors and omissions are solely ours.
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