Income, personality, and subjective financial well-being: the role of gender in their genetic and environmental relationships.
Increasing levels of financial inequality prompt questions about the relationship between income and well-being. Using a twins sample from the Survey of Midlife Development in the U. S. and controlling for personality as core self-evaluations (CSE), we found that men, but not women, had higher subjective financial well-being (SFWB) when they had higher incomes. This relationship was due to 'unshared environmental' factors rather than genes, suggesting that the effect of income on SFWB is driven by unique experiences among men. Further, for women and men, we found that CSE influenced income and SFWB, and that both genetic and environmental factors explained this relationship. Given the relatively small and male-specific relationship between income and SFWB, and the determination of both income and SFWB by personality, we propose that policy makers focus on malleable factors beyond merely income in order to increase SFWB, including financial education and building self-regulatory capacity.
Department of Management and Marketing, The University of Melbourne Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Michael J
MJ
Zyphur
Department of Psychological Sciences, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS USA.
Wen-Dong
WD
Li
Department of Management, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ USA.
Zhen
Z
Zhang
Department of Management and Organization, National University of Singapore Singapore, Singapore.
Richard D
RD
Arvey
Department of Management and Marketing, The University of Melbourne Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Adam P
AP
Barsky
core self evaluations; gender; income; structural equation modelling; subjective financial well-being; survey of midlife development in the U. S.