Where the Streets Have a Name: Income Comparisons in the US

This paper analyses how neighbors' income affect agents' well-being using unprecedented data from the BRFSS and the City of Somerville. We conduct a multi-scale approach at the county, ZIP code and street-levels and find that the association between well-being and neighbors' income follows an inverted U-shaped pattern in the size of the area. We find a negative relationship between well-being and neighbors' income in the county of residence, but the opposite at the ZIP code-level. Our results are consistent with the fact that agents enjoy living in a rich ZIP code but also having poor faraway neighbors since they have preferences for high social status. We test explicitly this interpretation by including amenities and the relative rank in the local income distribution in our model. At the street-level, we find a negative association between neighbors' income and self-reported well-being indicating the presence of income comparisons between very close neighbors.

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Source https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00795198
Author Brodeur, Abel, Flèche, Sarah
Maintainer CCSD
Last Updated May 14, 2026, 00:24 (UTC)
Created May 14, 2026, 00:24 (UTC)
Identifier halshs-00795198
Language en
Rights https://about.hal.science/hal-authorisation-v1/
contributor Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques (PSE) ; École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS-PSL) ; Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)-École nationale des ponts et chaussées (ENPC)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
creator Brodeur, Abel
date 2013-02-14T00:00:00
harvest_object_id f9c957c1-939e-483b-a047-e2d17f2b3db4
harvest_source_id 3374d638-d20b-4672-ba96-a23232d55657
harvest_source_title test moissonnage SELUNE
metadata_modified 2025-10-01T00:00:00
set_spec type:UNDEFINED