Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/287254 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Citation: 
[Journal:] Social Indicators Research [ISSN:] 1573-0921 [Volume:] 155 [Issue:] 2 [Publisher:] Springer Netherlands [Place:] Dordrecht [Year:] 2021 [Pages:] 745-767
Publisher: 
Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht
Abstract: 
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.
Subjects: 
Education
Positional good
Subjective well-being
Germany
JEL: 
I21
I31
Z13
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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