Publication type
Journal Article
Authors
Publication date
February 15, 2020
Summary:
With a focus on the immigrant population, this study examines how the association between a relative income position and life satisfaction varies when the comparison group changes. Drawing data from Understanding Society in the UK between 2009 and 2015, this study first shows that after migration, income comparisons with the mainstream and co-ethnic groups in the host country matter more than that with the source-country population for one’s life satisfaction. Furthermore, the relevance of comparison groups to life satisfaction varies across immigrant generations. Income comparison with the source-country population is more relevant to life satisfaction of the 1st generation, whereas 1.5 and 2nd generations consider income comparisons within the host country more relevant. In particular, favourable income comparison with the mainstream group in the host country is the most relevant to life satisfaction of the 2nd-generation, followed by the 1.5-generation, and last by the 1st-generation immigrants.
Published in
Acta Sociologica
Volume and page numbers
Volume: 63 , p.82 -102
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/0001699319859397
ISSN
16993
Subjects
Notes
Open Access
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
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