Relative deprivation based on occupation: An effective predictor of Chinese life satisfaction

Asian Journal of Social Psychology

Volumn 14, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 148-158

  Zhang, Shuwei ^a,b   Wang, Erping ^a   Chen, Yiwen ^a  

^a INSTITUTE OF PSYCHOLOGY   (China)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES   (China)

Author keywords

Economic status; Life satisfaction; Reference group; Relative deprivation; Social status; Subjective well being

Indexed keywords

EID: 79955769483     PISSN: 13672223     EISSN: 1467839X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-839X.2010.01338.x     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. Adler, N. E., Epel, E. S., Castellazzo, G. & Ickovics, J. R. (2000). Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: preliminary data in healthy white women. Health Psychology, 19 (6), 586-592.
2. Alves, W. M. & Rossi, P. H. (1978). Who should get what? Fairness judgments of the distribution of earnings. American Journal of Sociology, 84 (3), 541-564.
3. Berrebi, Z. M. & Silber, J. (1985). Income inequality indices and deprivation: A generalization. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 100 (3), 807-810.
4. Brady, D. (2003). Rethinking the sociological measurement of poverty. Social Forces, 81 (3), 715-751.
5. Crosby, F. J. (1976). A model of egotistical relative deprivation. Psychological Review, 83, 85-113.
6. Crosby, F. J. (1979). Communication. American Political Science Review, 73, 822-825.
7. Davis, J. A. & Smith, T. W. (1998). General Social Survey, 1998. Chicago: National Opinion Research Council.
8. Della Fave, L. R. (1980). The meek shall not inherit the earth: Self-evaluation and the legitimacy of stratification. American Sociological Review, 45 (6), 955-971.
9. Diener, E. & Diener, R. B. (2002). Will money increase subjective well-being? A literature review and guide to needed research. Social Indicators Research, 57, 119-169.
10. Diener, E., Oishi, S. & Lucas, R. E. (2009). Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and life satisfaction. In: C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez, eds. Oxford Handbook of Social Psychology, 2nd edn, pp. 187-194. New York: Oxford University Press.
11. Diener, E., Sandvik, E., Seidlitz, L. & Diener, M. (1993). The relationship between income and subjective well-being: Relative or absolute? Social Indicators Research, 28, 195-223.
12. Diener, E. & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Beyond money: Towards an economy of well-being. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5 (1), 1-31.
13. Diener, E., Suh, E., Lucas, R. & Smith, H. (1999). Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 276-302.
14. Easterlin, R. A. (2001). Income and happiness: Towards a unified theory. The Economic Journal, 111 (7), 465-584.
15. Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7 (2), 117-140.
16. Foster, J., Greer, J. & Thorbecke, E. (1984). A class of decomposable poverty measures. Econometrica, 52 (3), 761-766.
17. Gitmez, A. S. & Morcl, G. (1994). Social-economic status and life satisfaction in Turkey. Social Indicators Research, 31, 77-98.
18. Gartrell, C. D. (2002). The embeddedness of social comparison. In: I. Walker & H. J. Smith, eds. Relative Deprivation: Specification, Development, and Integration, pp. 164-184. New York: Cambridge University Press.
19. Gerry, V. (2005). Social status and health: Absolute deprivation or relative comparison, or both? Health Psychology Review, 14 (2), 121-134.
20. Glenn, N. D. (2000). Race, gender, and the pursuit of happiness and satisfaction. National Journal of Sociology, 12 (2), 1-22.
21. Haring, M. J., Okun, M. A., & Stock, W. A. (1984). A quantitative synthesis of literature on work status and subjective well being. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 25 (3), 316-324.
22. Hauser, R. M. & Warren, J. R. (1997). Socioeconomic indexes for occupations: A review, update, and critique. Sociological Methodology, 27, 177-298.
23. Hearth, S., Kessler, T. & Leach, C. W. (2008). Advantaged group's emotional reactions to intergroup inequality: The dynamics of pride, guilt, and sympathy. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34 (1), 115-129.
24. Herzog, A. R. & Rodgers, W. L. (1981). Age and satisfaction: Data from several large surveys. Research on Aging, 3, 142-165.
25. Hey, J. D. & Lambert, P. J. (1980). Relative deprivation and the gini coefficient: Comment. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 95 (3), 567-573.
26. Hochschild, J. L. (1981). What's Fair American Beliefs about Distributive Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
27. Hodge, R. W., Siegel, P. M. & Rossi, P. H. (1964). Occupational prestige in the United States, 1925-1963. American Journal of Sociology, 70, 286-302.
28. Horley, J. & Lavery, J. J. (1995). Subjective well-being and age. Social Indicators Research, 34, 275-282.
29. Hughes, M. & Thomas, M. E. (1998). The continuing significance of race revisited: A study of race, class, and quality of life in America, 1972-1996. American Sociological Review, 63 (6), 785-795.
30. Iyer, A., Leach, C. W. & Crosby, F. J. (2003). White guilt and racial compensation: The benefits and limits of self focus. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 117-129.
31. Jasso, G. & Rossi, P. H. (1977). Distributive justice and earned income. American Sociological Review, 42 (4), 639-651.
32. Kakwani, N. (1984). The relative deprivation curve and its applications. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 2 (4), 384-394.
33. Kluegel, J. R. & Smith, E. R. (1986). Beliefs about Inequality: Americans' Views of What Is and What Ought to Be. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
34. Larson, R. (1978). Thirty years of research on the subjective well-being of older Americans. Journal of Gerontology, 33, 109-125.
35. Leach, C. W., Iyer, A. & Pedersen, A. (2006). Anger and guilt about ingroup advantage explain the willingness for political action. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 1232-1245.
36. Maslow, A. H. (1970). Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper & Row.
37. Merton, R. K. & Kitt, A. S. (1950). Contributions to the theory of reference group behavior. In: R. K. Merton & P. F. Lazarsfeld, eds. Continuities in Social Research: Studies in the Scope and Method of the American Soldier, pp. 40-105. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
38. Mroczek, D. K. (2001). Age and emotion in adulthood. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10, 87-90.
39. Osberg, L. & Xu, K. (2000). International comparisons of poverty intensity: Index decomposition and bootstrap inference. The Journal of Human Resources, 35 (1), 51-81.
40. Pettigrew, T. F., Christ, O., Wagner, U., Meertens, R. W., van Dick, R. & Zick, A. (2008). Relative deprivation and intergroup prejudice. Journal of Social Issues, 64 (2), 385-401.
41. Rainwater, L. & Smeeding, T. M. (2005). Poor kids in a rich country: America's children in comparative perspective. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
42. Robinson, R. V. & Bell, W. (1978). Equality, success, and social justice in England and the United States. American Sociological Review, 43 (2), 125-143.
43. Ruggles, P. (1990). Drawing the line: Alternative poverty measures and their implications for public policy. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press.
44. Runciman, W. G. (1966). Relative Deprivation and Social Justice: A Study of Attitudes to Social Inequality in Twentieth-Century England. Berkeley: University of California Press.
45. Schnittker, J. (2008). Diagnosing our national disease: Trends in income and happiness, 1973 to 2004. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71 (3), 257-280.
46. Sen, A. (1992). Inequality Reexamined. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
47. Sheldon, K. M., Ellior, A. J., Kim, Y. & Kasser, T. (2001). What is satisfying about satisfying events? Testing 10 candidate psychological needs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 570-585.
48. Shepelak, N. J. & Alwin, D. F. (1986). Beliefs about inequality and perceptions of distributive justice. American Sociological Review, 51 (1), 30-46.
49. Shu, X. L. & Zhu, Y. F. (2009). The quality of life in China. Social Indicators Research, 92, 191-225.
50. Stark, O. & Taylor, J. E. (1989). Relative deprivation and international migration. Demography, 26 (1), 1-14.
51. Stark, O. & Yitzhaki, S. (1988). Labor migration as a response to relative deprivation. Journal of Population Economics, 1, 57-70.
52. Stewart, Q. T. (2006). Reinvigorating relative deprivation: A new measure for a classic concept. Social Science Research, 35 (3), 779-802.
53. Stock, W. A., Okun, M. A., Haring, M. J. & Witter, R. A. (1983). Age and subjective well-being: A meta-analysis. In: R. J. Light, ed. Evaluation Studies: Review Annual, Vol. 8, pp. 279-302. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
54. Stouffer, S. A., Suchman, E. A., DeVinney, L. C., Star, S. A. & Williams, R. M. (1949). The American Soldier: Vol. 1. Adjustment during Army Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
55. Sweeney, P. D., McFarlin, D. B. & Inderrieden, E. J. (1990). Using relative deprivation theory to explain satisfaction with income and pay level: A multi-study examination. The Academy of Management Journal, 33 (2), 423-436.
56. Taylor, D. M. & Moghaddam, F. M. (1987). Theories of Intergroup Relations: International Social Psychological Perspectives. New York: Praeger.
57. Tropp, L. R. & Wright, S. C. (1999). Ingroup identification and relative deprivation: An examination across multiple social comparisons. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 707-724.
58. Turner, R. H. (1956). Role-taking, role standpoint, and reference group behavior. American Journal of Sociology, 61 (4), 316-328.
59. Veenhoven, R. (1994). Is happiness a trait? Tests of the theory that a better society does not make people any happier. Social Indicators Research, 32 (2), 101-160.
60. Walker, I. & Pettigrew, T. F. (1984). Relative deprivation theory: An overview and conceptual critique. British Journal of Social Psychology, Special Issue: Intergroup processes, 23 (4), 301-310.
61. Walker, I. & Smith, H. J. (2002). Fifty years of relative deprivation research. In: I. Walker & H. J. Smith, eds. Relative Deprivation: Specification, Development, and Integration, pp. 1-9. New York: Cambridge University Press.
62. Walker, I., Wong, N. K. & Kretzschmar, K. (2002). Relative deprivation and attribution: From grievance to action. In: I. Walker & H. J. Smith, eds. Relative Deprivation: Specification, Development, and Integration, pp. 288-312. New York: Cambridge University Press.
63. Williams, D. R. (1990). Socioeconomic differentials in health: A review and redirection. Social Psychology Quarterly, 53, 81-99.
64. World Values Survey Association. (1999). WVS 2000 Questionnaire. [Cited 19 October 2010] Available from URL.
65. Yitzhaki, S. (1979). Relative deprivation and the Gini coefficient. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 93 (2), 321-324.
66. Yitzhaki, S. (1982). Relative deprivation and economic welfare. European Economic Review, 17, 99-113.
67. Zagefka, H. & Brown, R. (2005). Comparisons and perceived deprivation in ethnic minority settings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 467-482.
68. Zhang, S. W., Zhou, J. & Wang, E. P. (2009). The antecedents of group relative deprivation and its effects on collective action: Empirical Research on the people of Wenchuan Earthquake Area. Journal of Public Management Quarterly, 6 (4), 69-78.