Graham, C., &Pettinato, S. (2002). Frustrated achievers: Winners, losers and subjective well-being in new market economies. Journal of Development Studies, 38(4), 100-140.
To date the literature on subjective well-being has focused on the developed economies. We provide empirical evidence from two emerging market countries, Peru and Russia. Our results - and in particular a strong negative skew in the assessments of the respondents with the greatest income gains - support the importance of relative rather than absolute income differences. Among other factors, we attribute our results to ...