Noah Carl writes that “life is mostly status competition.” One piece of evidence for this view:
In a famous 1998 study, Harvard students and faculty were asked which of two worlds they would prefer to live in: one where they earn $50,000 and others earn $25,000; or one where they earn $100,000 and others earn $200,000. (They were told that prices are the same in both worlds.) Between 38% and 56% of participants stated that they would prefer to earn only $50,000 so long as others earned even less. Results were similar in China and other US samples. And these figures should obviously be considered lower bounds, given that admitting you care more about status is not the socially desirable answer.
Experiments like this are fine to do, but you have to read them while understanding that nothing is on the line, and so people might give strange answers for all sorts of reasons. One has to check the results against real-world behavior.
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If people really preferred relatively higher income in a poorer society, then those born in Western Europe and the US would be saving up their money so they could live like kings in Africa. Very few people of middle- or upper-class status in poor countries would try to get to the West. Obviously, what we observe is precisely the opposite. Doctors from Africa will come to America in order to drive a cab if their license to practice medicine isn’t recognized. Research on Middle Eastern and African migrants to Europe shows that they aren’t the poorest of the poor, but are relatively well off for where they come from. There are a lot of stories about how terribly South Asian migrant workers are treated in the Arab Gulf, but this causes no problem in recruiting laborers who want to earn a higher income.
Here, one might respond that people’s reference group is the country they come from. A poor Mexican who becomes a day laborer in the US might be looked down upon in his new home, but everyone in the village he came from sees him as a bigshot. Similarly, we denigrate “passport bros” who take their American dollars and spend them on prostitutes in Thailand.
