Score One for Robert Frank

The Cornell economist has been one of the most visible proponents of the idea that relative wealth has as great, if not greater, impact on our happiness as absolute wealth.

If you're making $70,000 per year and living in a 700-sqft apartment in New York City while people in your network are making $200,000 and living in a 1,000-sqft loft, you might not be as happy as someone who is earning $60,000 a year in Kansas and living in a larger home than his neighbors who are making $40,000-$50,000 per year.

(Check out Frank's book Falling Behind for more on this, it's a quick read.)

Now comes more -- stark -- evidence that this type of self-assessment (as opposed to simple envy) is linked to our sense of well-being.

Using two different data sets, Mary Daly and Daniel Wilson of the San Francisco Federal Reserve and Norman Johnson of the Census Bureau found that people whose own income was lower than the average income for the county that they lived in had an increased chance of committing suicide.

Specifically -- after controlling for various demographic attributes such as age, sex, marital, etc. -- they found that if the county's income was 10 percent higher than your income, your chance of committing suicide increased by 3.9 percent.

The researchers also suggest that the negative impact of comparing your own income with that of others could be understated by their study. For example, if people are choosing not to live in areas where their neighbors are more well off, then they're less likely to commit suicide.

Check out Mark Thoma for more discussion on this paper.