The social gradient in Subjective Well-being (SWB)

Abstract

Background: The Social gradient in Subjective wellbeing (SWB) exists in countries, and in individuals, either rich or poor, and the pattern can be seen when looking at the factors of Socio-economic Position (SEP) is a strong predictor of SWB and as well as a popular concept in health and happiness research.

Aim: The main aim of this paper is firstly, to determine whether there are socio-economic gradients in SWB, and secondly, to evaluate how are different socioeconomic variables are associated with different measures of SWB.

Method: This is a cross-sectional study that uses data from a survey titled "People's Views on Socioeconomic Position" that was conducted in three countries: the UK, the US, and Canada. The main analysis was conducted by means of multiple linear regression analysis, which was used to investigate the association of SEP with SWB, measured by four different SWB outcome variables: Global life Satisfaction (GLS), Personal wellbeing index (PWI), Job satisfaction, and Meaningfulness. Education, household income, relative income, Childhood financial circumstances (CFC), father´s education, mother´s education, and being born native along with demographic variables (age, sex, marital status, and country ) are the independent variable.

Results: The four measures of SWB were significantly impacted by SEP. The relationship between the four SWB measures with education, relative income, and childhood financial circumstances all showed statistically significant associations. This indicates that higher education, relative income, and CFC influenced SWB positively. Marital status was significantly and positively associated with SWB. The additional thing to note is, when relative income is considered, the magnitude of the link between absolute income and SWB broadly disappeared and turns insignificant.

Conclusion: This study reported indicates an existence of a social gradient in SWB. It was noticed that education, relative income, CFC and marital status have the greatest influence on SWB. Lower levels of education, low relative income, poor childhood financial circumstances, and being single predict lower SWB. Keywords: Social Gradient, Subjective Well-being, Socioeconomic Position, Personal wellbeing Index, Global Life satisfaction, Job Satisfaction, Meaningfulness