Perceived versus measured income rank and job satisfaction: evidence from China

Using 23,908 person-year observations from the 2016–2022 China Family Panel Studies, this article presents a correlational analysis of perceived income position and job satisfaction among Chinese wage workers. Perceived rank is a five-point assessment of personal income in the local area; measured rank is the county-year quintile of annual work income. Their difference defines a descriptive rank gap. The main outcome averages satisfaction with work safety, the work environment and working time. A one-point higher gap is associated with 0.047 points higher non-pay job satisfaction. Conditional on income ventiles and measured-rank indicators, the perceived-rank coefficient is 0.140 in the pooled model and 0.076 with person fixed effects. Joint adjustment for general evaluation, job characteristics and interview conditions yields contemporaneous coefficients of 0.089 and 0.067, respectively. The next-wave association is smaller and imprecisely estimated after joint adjustment. The findings link subjective economic position to workers’ evaluations of working conditions.