Outclassed: how your neighbor’s income might affect your happiness

Don't scoff: psychological and social science research supports that living amid the wealthy even when you are upper-middle class is bad for your mental health

• Outclassed, our new column about inequality, will run twice a month

Shaun Tanner, a web developer and meteorologist, lives in San Jose, California, and works in Alameda, over an hour's commute each way. His profession and location might indicate that Tanner is affluent, part of the storied Silicon Valley tech boom. But Tanner's experience is quite different. He has a $3,000 monthly mortgage, less than half of his monthly income. Yet "week to week", he says, he "still feels a crunch" on Fridays. "There's nothing left here," he says.

Until last September, Tanner had to work three jobs to pay for his health insurance and family's expenses - as a meteorologist at Weather Underground, a rain-and-shine site, as an independent contractor, and as an instructor at San Jose State University. Now, he is down to working only two jobs, including laboring for what is called a "weather drone start-up". (Cool! Scary!) Nonetheless, Tanner is still economically pressured, still commuting, and still heavily exerting himself to pay for three kids in after-school programs and daycare, all aged 10 and under.