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Poverty is a Public Bad: Panel Evidence From Subjective Well‐Being Data
Author(s) -
Welsch Heinz,
Biermann Philipp
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
review of income and wealth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1475-4991
pISSN - 0034-6586
DOI - 10.1111/roiw.12350
Subject(s) - poverty , economics , panel data , demographic economics , unemployment , poverty rate , per capita , subjective well being , development economics , econometrics , psychology , economic growth , demography , sociology , social psychology , happiness , population
Previous research has found that subjective well‐being (SWB) is lower for individuals classified as being in poverty. We extend the poverty‐SWB literature by focusing on aggregate poverty. Using panel data for 39,239 individuals living in Germany from 2005–2013, we show that people's SWB is negatively correlated with the regional (state‐level) poverty ratio while controlling for individual poverty status and poverty intensity. This suggests that poverty is a public bad. The negative relationship between aggregate poverty and SWB is more salient in the upper segments of the income distribution and is robust to controlling for the rate of unemployment and per capita GDP. The character of poverty as a public bad suggests that poverty alleviation is a matter not only of distributive justice, but of allocative efficiency.