From the New York Times:

This trove of data came in handy a few years ago when Kincer happened upon a Web site called NetworthIQ, which allows people to record their net worths and display the ups and downs for anyone to view.... That attitude is familiar to Michael McBride, an economics professor at the University of California, Irvine. “We crave information, not just to outdo others but to know how we ourselves are doing,” says McBride, who has studied how people’s well-being is affected when they compare their incomes against those of others. “When I pass out tests, the first thing students want to know is what the mean was. They don’t know how to interpret their score unless they know how well others did.”

For the full story, please visit http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/net-worth-obsession/.