Living in a Wealthy Neighborhood Might Make You More Materialistic

It's obviously bad for your well-being to keep up with the Kardashians, but keeping up with the plain old Joneses is a bad idea too. One study from a couple years back found that people's happiness went down as their neighbor's income went up. That was true even controlling for personal income. No matter how much you actually made, it upset you just to know the Joneses made a little bit more.

Add another guy-next-door grievance to the pile: a group of psychologists suspects that living in a wealthy neighborhood might make you more materialistic. The researchers found that living in and around high incomes predicts "greater desires for material consumption, more impulsive buying, and fewer savings behaviors." They report their findings in the Journal of Consumer Culture.