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Earning Less than Your Peers: Relative Wage Deprivation and Subjective Well-Being in Chile

M. Barrera Salgado et al.

The BE Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy2026https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2025-0325article
AJG 2ABDC A
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

We study the relationship between relative deprivation and subjective well-being in a developing economy. Using nationally representative household surveys from Chile (2009–2017), we construct an age-occupation-based measure of relative wage deprivation. We find that earning less than comparable peers is significantly associated with lower self-rated health, even after controlling for absolute income, demographic characteristics, and a rich set of socioeconomic and contextual factors. We further document substantial heterogeneity and non-linearity: the effect is persistent across the life course for women, while for men it emerges only at older ages. These results underscore the role of within-group income comparisons in shaping subjective well-being in unequal labour markets.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2025-0325

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@article{m.2026,
  title        = {{Earning Less than Your Peers: Relative Wage Deprivation and Subjective Well-Being in Chile}},
  author       = {M. Barrera Salgado et al.},
  journal      = {The BE Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2025-0325},
}

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Earning Less than Your Peers: Relative Wage Deprivation and Subjective Well-Being in Chile

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.