Research Information System
APPLIED ECONOMICS LETTERS, vol.19, no.10, pp.901-904, 2012 (SSCI)
This article focuses on the relationship between happiness and standard of living compared with kids and parents in the United States. Using General Social Survey (GSS) data from 1993 to 2010, I find that people who are poorer than their parents or those whose kids are worse off than them are unhappier than the people who have the same standard of living compared with their parents or kids. On the other hand, people who are richer than their parents and people who have richer kids are not significantly happier. These results might suggest that people in the United States are altruistic towards their children only if they are poorer than them but not if their children are richer.