Hierarchical Needs, Income Comparisons, and Happiness Levels

Drakopoulos, Stavros A.

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-4963-4_2

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 80 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In our framework, hierarchy implies that once a level of labor earnings that satisfies the basic needs has been reached, further changes of labor earnings do not provide analogous changes on happiness levels because secondary needs come into the picture (Clark & Oswald, 1996;Drakopoulos & Theodossiou, 1997;Drakopoulos, 2013). Taking into account the notion of earnings that satisfy basic needs, an employee's happiness level can be written as:…”

Section: Labor Earning Changes and Hierarchical Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Labor earnings reductions, happiness levels and needs hierarchy

Drakopoulos¹,

Grimani²

2017

Intnl. J. Wellbeing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

One of the main economic outcomes of the recent Great Recession has been the decrease of labor earnings in many countries. The relevant literature indicates that earnings and other socioeconomic predictors can influence levels of happiness. This paper tests the effect of pay cuts on happiness levels based on the psychological model of hierarchical needs. The basic idea of hierarchy is that the most important needs must be satisfied first before the secondary needs come into the picture. In a happiness research framework, this implies that for higher income levels, the effect of pay cuts on reported happiness levels becomes much weaker, given that the satisfaction of non-basic needs becomes important. The data used in this paper was drawn from the 5th European Survey on Working Conditions, which focuses on European countries. Two different disaggregation methods were performed, based on absolute nominal income threshold and relative income threshold, respectively. The methods for analyzing the data are the ordinary leastsquares (OLS) regression model, and the Wald chi-square test. The pay cuts are a stronger predictor of happiness for low/middle income individuals than for high income individuals when it comes to disaggregation based on absolute threshold. The regression coefficients of pay cuts for the low/middle income group were not significantly different from those for the high income group regarding disaggregation based on relative threshold. The results seem to depend on the disaggregation method, implying the need for further research and discussion.

show abstract

Section: Labor Earning Changes and Hierarchical Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Labor earnings reductions, happiness levels and needs hierarchy

Drakopoulos¹,

Grimani²

2017

Intnl. J. Wellbeing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Thus, to which point having a house of 1,500 m 2 gives you more happiness than one of 1,000 m 2 ? Not much more (Winkelmann 2012 ), but you need to "keep up with the Joneses" to conform with the social codes (Drakopoulos 2013 ), and because the demand is there, the size of the houses keeps rising inexorably on, accelerating the urban sprawl while denying more and more people the ability to house themselves properly. -Third, all the actors have to consider the other members as legitimate partners, and the process of co-construction itself as satisfying the criteria of saliency, credibility, and legitimacy, which is all but evident to achieve (Mollinga 2008 ).…”

Section: Participatory Joint-construction Of Sustainability Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insights for a Better Future in an Unfair World: Combining Social Justice with Sustainability

Mancebo

2014

Transitions to Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

One of the more challenging aspects of sustainability policies is to address social justice. Often, so-called sustainability initiatives turn out to be completely out of touch with the needs and expectations of the populations concerned, and contribute to increase social injustice. This is particularly true in urban areas, which are the ambit of this chapter. How to cope with this problem? Promoting people's place-based appropriation of sustainability policies looks like an interesting lead to follow. The challenge here is to address the social process of decisionmaking. Ultimately, the challenge is design a new social contract: matter in which a comprehensive understanding of the coordination mechanisms between the local, national, regional and international scale is crucial. Keywords Transition to sustainability • Social process of decision-making • Urban planning • Multilevel governance • Imported sustainability Achieving a livable and sustainable future in a changing world is a crucial challenge that our societies are facing. On this point, everybody agrees. Though, when it comes to determining how to do this practically, or simply what sustainability really is about, and, there is much less consensus. Addressing the antagonisms between social justice and sustainability is a way amongst many to address transition to sustainability. This chapter focuses on the sharp processes of spatial differentiation and the many-fold confl icts between urban sustainability and social justice. The reason why it is so diffi cult to answer the basic question of what sustainability is lays into the fact that sustainable development is not only about science. It also is about ideas and values (Leiserowitz et al. 2006

show abstract

Socioeconomic Status and Well-Being

Tambyah,

Yow

2024

International Series on Consumer Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Hierarchical Needs, Income Comparisons, and Happiness Levels

Cited by 4 publications

References 80 publications

Labor earnings reductions, happiness levels and needs hierarchy

Labor earnings reductions, happiness levels and needs hierarchy

Insights for a Better Future in an Unfair World: Combining Social Justice with Sustainability

Socioeconomic Status and Well-Being

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About