respondent’s level of education.9
[Table 1 about here]
We also find that those who employed at least one person other than
themselves were richer than the others. ESS collected each respondent’s
estimate of net household income in 12 ordered categories. The categories
do not share an equal interval. We assign the mid-value of each category’s
income range to the respondents in that category.10 We then divide each
figure by the corresponding number of household members because we ex-
amine the importance of economic self-interest to individual attitudes. This
yields net income per capita assuming, although unrealistic, that household
income is shared equally by the members. We finally divide each figure by
the corresponding national mean net income per capita. We call this vari-
able relinc, approximating the relative income position of each respondent
in the country where she or he was interviewed.
The sample mean of relinc is 1.075. However, the mean for those with
employ =1is higher than the rest (1.243 and 1.050, respectively). The
9 ESS sorted respondents into 7 groups according to a modified version of ISCED97, as
in Table 1. We collapse these into 4 groups by merging “primary or basic (first stage)”
and “lower secondary or basic (second stage)”; “upper secondary” and “postsecondary
(non-tertiary)”; and “tertiary (first stage)” and “tertiary (second stage)”. The data for
Austria are missing in the cross-country data file due to a slight inconsistency in the data
collection between the country and the rest. We used the corresponding data in the
Austria-specific file by merging “abschluss weiterbildende schule” and “matura”.
10The highest category has no upper bound and hence no mid-value. We used the
following formula for the mid-value of the highest category: the largest figure for the
second highest category + (the largest figure for the second highest category - the largest
figure for the third highest category)/2. The data for France and Ireland are missing in
the cross-country file due to a slight inconsistency in the data collection between these
countries and the rest. However, this should not matter, for our measure is of relative
income at the national level. Hence we used the corresponding household income data
from country-specific files for France and Ireland.
10