Subjective Well-Being and Social Comparison: A Comparative Study on Rural Thailand and Vietnam

This paper analyzes the determinants of the households' welfare perception using the data from surveys on rural households in Thailand and Vietnam. Welfare perception corresponds to the households' subjective assessment of their general situations. We focus on the social comparison and take into account relative poverty, harsh living conditions, economic and natural risks as well as the households' degree of risk acceptance. Our study shows that households, in both countries, are sensitive to income and relative poverty, but only Thai households appear to care about social comparison regarding their wealth. In particular, this comparison is asymmetric. Natural risks as well as households' attitude to risks affect households' well-being differently in the two countries, while we observe a similarity in the impact of economic shocks.