Local Income Inequality and Subjective Well-Being in Latin America

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.12804/revistas.urosario.edu.co/economia/a.16048

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Published: Jul 16, 2026
Issue: Vol. 28 No. 1 (2025):
Section Articles


Keywords: Happiness Well-being Inequality Social Cohesion

Main Article Content

Authors

  Leonardo Caravaggio
Universidad de Buenos Aires

Abstract

The relationship between local income inequality and subjective well-being in Latin America is analyzed. To do this, daytime satellite images and the average happiness level of a set of more than one thousand urban agglomerations in the region were studied. Objective patterns of visual heterogeneity are extracted from the images using deep neural networks, and an inequality indicator around the selected centroid is computed from them. This inequality indicator offers certain advantages over traditional objective indicators (granularity and periodicity) and subjective indicators (scalability, consistency, and accuracy). A statistically significant negative correlation is found between these objective inequality indicators and the subjective happiness measure. This relationship is particularly strong for images with an approximate radius of 10 kilometers, suggesting that this spatial scale more closely captures the local environments in which social com parisons are formed. Moreover, a negative association between inequality and subjective well-being is observed across the entire distribution: urban areas with higher levels of inequality tend to report, on average, lower levels of happiness.

How to Cite
Caravaggio, L. (2026). Local Income Inequality and Subjective Well-Being in Latin America. Revista Economía Del Rosario, 28(1), 1–47. https://doi.org/10.12804/revistas.urosario.edu.co/economia/a.16048
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