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This article uses data from the 2004 wave of the Workplace Employment Relations Survey to investigate the relative effects of the wage, worker autonomy and voice on self-reported satisfaction with work. The article adds two innovations: it considers a disaggregated measure of job satisfaction that considers satisfaction with the work task itself, and it explicitly compares the relative explanatory power of the wage, voice and autonomy. It is found that voice and autonomy play a much larger role than the wage in explaining satisfaction with work. The results are consistent with the assertion that there is an important distinction between how individuals choose their place of work (decision utility) and what drives job satisfaction once they are employed (experience utility). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses General Social Survey data linked to Census data to investigate the effect of local area income and income inequality on worker well-being. Others have found a robust negative correlation between reference group income and self-reported well-being. However, in many cases the reference group is defined as a large geographic area. This paper adds to the literature in two ways. First, it considers multiple nested geographic reference groups with US data. Second, it explicitly considers income inequality in addition to the level of income. It is found that both income and income inequality are positively associated with well-being at the census tract level, but negatively associated at the county level. Further, the effect of inequality on well-being decreases as income increases at the census tract and county level, while it increases at the state level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]