Testing Subjective Well-Being from the Perspective of Social Quality: Quantile Regression Evidence from Shanghai, China

Based on an empirical survey in Shanghai, this study tests how the effects of Social Quality’s four domains viz. social economic security, social inclusion, social cohesion, and social empowerment—on subjective well-being (SWB) vary across quantiles of SWB. The results show that house tenure, financial balance, social participation, social trust, loneliness, and social alienation, are strong predictors for SWB across SWB’s quantiles. Institutional trust improves SWB among those with lower and middle levels of SWB. People’s view on success attribution is also associated with SWB. Being married makes those with low levels of SWB happier, whereas high education only benefits those from the upper quantiles of SWB.     

Could the EQ-5D be Used to Predict Mortality and Hospitalization Over a Long Term Period?

Although numerous studies have demonstrated that social support affects a range of life experiences, only a few have examined the moderators and mediators such as self-esteem. According to self-control theory, self-control represents one’s ability to override or change one’s inner responses, and to interrupt undesired behavioral tendencies and refrain from acting on them. A high level of self-control may help individuals to mediate or moderate negative affect and thus weaken any adverse effects, contributing to their subjective well-being (SWB) in the long run. The current study explored how this interaction may affect the subjective well-being of the Chinese elderly, for whom self-control and social support are especially important life management issues. The study examined whether self-control mediates and moderates the relationship between social support and SWB among the elderly Chinese population. The data were collected from 335 elderly Chinese people (162 females and 173 males) from ten cities in central China, who completed the Chinese Social Support Scale, Trait Self-control Scale, Life Satisfaction Scale and Positive and Negative Affect Scale. The results showed that self-control, social support and SWB were strongly and significantly related. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that self-control partially mediated the influence of social support on SWB. Moreover, self-control moderated the relationship between social support and positive affect, but not life satisfaction and negative affect. These findings imply that self-control is a critical indicator of SWB and can serve as a basis for differentiating between intervention strategies that promote SWB among the elderly by helping them manage positive and negative affect. Future studies should further examine the internal mechanisms by which self-control influences SWB.     

How Friendship Network Characteristics Influence Subjective Well-Being

This article explores how friendship network characteristics influence subjective well-being (SWB). Using data from the 2003 General Social Survey of Canada, three components of the friendship network are differentiated: number of friends, frequency of contact, and heterogeneity of friends. We argue that these characteristics shape SWB through the benefits they bring. Benefits considered are more social trust, less stress, better health, and more social support. Results confirm that higher frequency of contacts and higher number of friends, as well as lower heterogeneity of the friendship network are related to more social trust, less stress, and a better health. Frequency of contact and number of friends, as well as more heterogeneity of the friendship network increase the chance of receiving help from friends. With the exception of receiving help from friends, these benefits are in turn related to higher levels of SWB. Only the frequency of meeting friends face-to-face has a remaining positive direct influence on SWB.     

Explaining Low Subjective Well-Being of Persons with Disabilities in Europe: The Impact of Disability, Personal Resources, Participation and Socio-Economic Status

Persons with chronic disabilities report the lowest subjective well-being (SWB) in many countries. The gap in SWB compared with the non-disabled population is smaller in some countries than in others. Data from the European Social Survey were analysed in order to: (1) describe the inequality in SWB in 21 European countries; and (2) identify the main determinants of this inequality in SWB. Data on a range of topics of a total of 40,605 persons, including 2,846 persons with serious chronic disabilities, were used of the European Social Survey. SWB was measured using multi-item scales for ‘emotional well-being’ and ‘satisfying life’. Variables on disability, socio-demographics (age, gender, household composition), socio-economic status (level of education, net household income), participation (paid work, voluntary work, social contacts), and personal resources (supportive relationships, social cohesion, vitality, optimism, resilience, perceived autonomy, perceived accomplishment, perceived capacity, perceived engagement, perceived meaning and purpose) were entered stepwise in regression models of SWB. The results show that persons with disabilities are in a disadvantaged position in terms of SWB in all countries. In the Northern countries, the gaps between disabled and non-disabled persons are smaller than in Eastern European countries. In all countries inequality in SWB is explained mostly by personal resources and not by the level of disability, socio-economic status or level of participation in work. The implications of these findings for policy and practice (e.g. social cohesion and physical exercise programs) are discussed.     

Does Development Make You Happy? Subjective Wellbeing And Economic Growth In Developing Countries

The evidence for any relationship between GDP/capita growth and growth in subjective wellbeing (SWB) in wealthier countries is disputed, at best. However, there are a number of reasons commonly articulated for thinking the relationship should be stronger in less developed countries (LDCs). This paper looks at both reasons for expecting the relationship to be stronger in developing countries, and those for a weak link that might still apply in LDCs. Finally, it turns to a limited data set to see what that might tell us. The results suggest that, at least in middle-income countries, there is little strong evidence in favor of a connection between economic growth and SWB.     

“Beyond GDP” Effects on National Subjective Well-Being of OECD Countries

Some authors claim that maximizing subjective well-being is a more meaningful social objective than maximizing GDP and that other factors beyond income play a major role in defining well-being. In this work, we study two issues connected with this claim, looking at the context of OECD member countries. We look at the crowded category of proposed, “beyond GDP” policy-controlled factors, searching for evidence that some might be major determinants of national average subjective well-being. We also seek to compare any such effect with that of GDP, in order to evaluate if these factors have a better chance of leading to a maximization of well-being than GDP itself. In our analyses, we make use of partial order methods that have been rarely applied to this field of study. They seem particularly appropriate to the case, as well-being and its components are generally theorized as strongly multidimensional while standard modeling strategies require a great deal of compromise when working with many potential regressors and non-trivial levels of multicollinearity.     

The Cost of Well-Being

It is by now common knowledge that in switching from GDP to alternative, multidimensional, measures of collective well-being one can provide a better account of a country’s socio-economic conditions. Such a gain, however, comes at the price of losing output-to-input type of link between well-being and the resources necessary to make it available. Since well-being measures are not meant to be only an exercise in documentation, but also to inform policies and priorities, we propose a method to build a measure of well-being in the form of a single index, as for GDP, which takes into account: (1) the social and environmental costs, not considered in the GDP, and (2) the use of conventional resources (capital and labour), not considered in the currently available multidimensional measures of well-being. We use a Data Envelopment Analysis type of model, integrated with Principal Component Analysis, to evaluate OECD countries’ relative efficiency in providing well-being. Our results show that the costs of producing well-being have a large and significant impact on the resulting index of well-being. Therefore, high efficiency in providing well-being and high income cannot be considered a proxy to each other. In addition, it is shown that countries react differently to the different costs of well-being: poor countries are, on average, more efficient in terms of conventional inputs (labour and capital), while rich countries have higher efficiency indices relative to social and environmental costs. The close to zero correlation between GDP and well-being indices for rich countries provides new support to the “Easterlin paradox”.     

Income Inequality and Subjective Well-being: A Cross-National Study on the Conditional Effects of Individual and National Characteristics

In this study we raise the question how a nation’s income inequality affects subjective well-being. Using information on 195,091 individuals from 85 different countries from the World Value Surveys and the European Value Surveys, we established that in general, people living in more unequal countries report higher well-being than people from more equal countries. This association however does not apply to all people similarly. First, the positive effect of a nation’s income inequality is weaker when individuals express more social and institutional trust, and underscore egalitarian norms to a larger extent. Second, the positive association between national income inequality and subjective well-being is less strong for people from countries with high levels of social and institutional trust. So, our research predominantly indicates that there are far-reaching effects of an individual’s and a nation’s trust on people’s well-being.     

The Geography of Economics and Happiness: Spatial Patterns in the Effects of Economic Conditions on Well-Being

This paper investigates the cross-country distribution of the relationship between economic conditions and well-being. Using a large sample of individuals from 94 countries worldwide, we find that the effect of income on well-being is larger in countries with lower GDP per capita, while the negative effect of being unemployed is stronger in countries with higher unemployment rate or higher GDP per capita. Interestingly, the effect of being unemployed displays positive spatial dependence across countries that is not accounted for by aggregate socio-economic conditions. Overall, the results indicate that geography, culture and institutions must be explicitly taken into account in order to understand the relationship between economic conditions and well-being.     

Shyness and Subjective Well-being: The Role of Emotional Intelligence and Social Support

This study examined the role of emotional intelligence (EI) and social support on the relationship between shyness and subjective well-being (SWB) in Chinese college students. The participants were 496 students, with an age range of 18–24, who were attending two different Chinese colleges. Data were collected by using the paper and pencil assessments including Cheek and Buss shyness scale, Wong and Law emotional intelligence scale, multi-dimensional scale of perceived social support, positive affect and negative affect scale and satisfaction with life scale. Path analysis showed that EI and social support partially mediated the relationship between shyness and SWB. The final model also revealed a significant path from shyness through EI and social support to SWB. Furthermore, a multi-group analysis found that the paths did not differ across sexes, but significantly differed between urban and rural areas. The results are discussed in terms of the conceptional context.     

On Well-Being and Public Policy: Are We Capable of Questioning the Hegemony of Happiness?

Measuring the well-being of citizens has become established practice in many advanced democracies. In the move to go beyond GDP, indicators of subjective well-being (SWB) have come to the fore, and are increasingly seen as providing a ‘yardstick’ to guide public policy. A strong version of this position is that SWB can (and should) provide the sole basis on which to design and evaluate public policy. This article argues that the increasing dominance of the subjective definition of well-being is problematic, and amounts to a hegemony of happiness. The article examines the fundamental assumptions behind different accounts of well-being, and develops a critique of the ‘strong position’ that sees SWB as the ultimate guide for public policy. First, the connections between the modern debate and classical schools of thought are discussed, and the strong Benthamite SWB approach is contrasted with the alternative Aristotelian capabilities approach. Next, the article examines current practice, using the UK’s Measuring National Well-being Programme as a case study. Finally, the article concludes that SWB has questionable legitimacy as a summary indicator of objective quality of life, and does not, on its own, provide a reliable metric for public policy. The capabilities approach, which takes a pluralist perspective on well-being and prioritises freedom and opportunity, offers a richer and more useful foundation for policy.     

Social Capital,Government and Democracy Satisfaction,and Happiness in Turkey: A Comparison of Surveys in 1999 and 2008

Based on data from a 1999 and a 2008 European Values Survey, the main objective of this study is to explore the relationship between a variety of social capital indicators, satisfaction with government and democracy, and subjective well-being. Happiness and life satisfaction were used as outcome measures of subjective well-being. The indicators of social capital used in this study are general trust, trust in institutions, political engagement, concern for others, societal norms, and membership in volunteer organizations. The analyses reveal a significant increase in happiness, life satisfaction, and many social capital variables between 1999 and 2008. Generalized trust, trust in institutions, government satisfaction, and democracy satisfaction are positive correlates of well-being, although some relationships are significant only in 2008. Several demographic variables are also linked with subjective well-being such as income, employment status, age, gender, and education. We discuss the findings in relation to the significant societal, economic, and political changes experienced in Turkey between 1999 and 2008. Policy implications are also emphasized such as improved trust among individuals, trustworthiness of government institutions, and functioning of democracy.     

Adult Attachment,Love Styles,Relationship Experiences and Subjective Well-Being: Cross-Cultural and Gender Comparison between Americans,Portuguese, and Mozambicans

Attachment security, love styles, and romantic relationship experiences are closely associated with subjective well-being (SWB). A few studies have empirically observed significant relations between these variables. However, no studies have included all of these predictors to analyze the unique contribution of each to SWB, and no cross-cultural studies have analyzed these variables simultaneously. This article examined (a) the relations between attachment security, love styles, romantic relationship experiences and subjective well-being, (b) the unique contribution of each to predict SWB, and (c) cross-cultural and gender differences in the predictors of SWB across three samples of 1,574 university students: 497 from North Carolina (US), 544 from Maputo (Mozambique), and 533 from Lisbon (Portugal). We found cross-cultural differences in the three samples. The main predictor of SWB was attachment security in the US and Portuguese samples, while in the Mozambican it was eros love style. Storge love style positively predicted SWB in the US and Portuguese samples, but not in the Mozambican. In contrast, mania love style predicted the SWB of Mozambicans but not that of Americans or Portuguese. We found gender similarities and differences: the association between attachment security and SWB was not gender-specific; the associations between love styles, relationship experiences and SWB were gender-specific.     

Richer in Money, Poorer in Relationships and Unhappy? Time Series Comparisons of Social Capital and Well-Being in Luxembourg

The worrying decline of social capital (Putnam in Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster, New York, 2000) and the disappointing trends of subjective well-being characterising the US (Easterlin in Nations and households in economic growth. Academic Press, New York, 1974; Easterlin and Angelescu in Happiness and growth the world over: time series evidence on the happiness-income paradox, 2009; Easterlin et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 107:22463–22468, 2010) raise urgent questions for modern societies: is the erosion of social capital a feature of the more developed and richer countries or is it rather a characteristic aspect of the American society? To test the hypothesis that the erosion of social capital and declining well-being are not a common feature of richer countries, present work focuses on Luxembourg. The main results are: (1) the erosion of social capital is not a legacy of the richest countries in the world; (2) between 1999 and 2008, people in Luxembourg experienced a substantial increase in almost every proxy of social capital; (3) both endowments and trends of social capital and subjective well-being differ significantly within the population. Migrants participate less in social relationships and report lower levels of well-being; (4) the positive relationship between trends of subjective well-being and social capital found in previous literature is confirmed.     

The Characteristics of Children’s Subjective Well-Being

Despite the increased interest in recent decades in the study of children’s subjective well-being (SWB), much too little is known about the factors that contribute to their SWB, especially with regards to socio-demographic characteristics. In addition, only handful of studies has made a comparison between countries and was based on large samples. The present study is a first of its kind. Utilizing the International Study of Children’s Well-Being first wave data set with questionnaires from over 34,500 children from 14 different countries to explore the characteristics of children’s SWB and the relations between an array of socio-demographic variables and children’s SWB. SWB was measured using three scales—overall life satisfaction, overall satisfaction in specific domains and overall SWB that was measured using agreement items. The socio-demographic variables were composed of demographic characteristics (e.g. gender and age), self-reported socio-economic items and the children’s country of residence. Findings show that children’s SWB in all countries is relatively high, although some variation can be found between the three SWB scales. Differences were found between the three measurements of SWB in regard to the explained variance, nevertheless the socio-demographic characteristics explain relatively low amount of the variance in SWB (10.9–20.2 %). The demographic variables have the lowest contribution, followed by the socio-economic items, while countries have the highest contribution. Thus one of our main conclusions is that the answer for understanding children’s SWB does not lay in the socio-demographic characteristics. The implications of these findings for further research of children’s SWB are discussed.     

Individual quality of life: can it be accounted for by psychological or subjective well-being?

There is ongoing discussion in the scientific literature about the need for a more theoretical foundation to underpin quality of life (QoL) measurement. This paper applied Keyes et al.’s [J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 82 (2002) 1007] model of well-being as a framework to assess whether respondents (n = 136 students) focus on elements of subjective well-being (SWB), such as satisfaction and happiness, or on elements of psychological well-being (PWB), such as meaning and personal growth, when making individual QoL (IQoL) judgments using the Schedue of the Evaluation of Individual Quality of Life (SEIQoL). The Keyes et al.’s model was confirmed and explained 41% of the variance in SEIQoL scores. Both SWB and PWB were correlated with the SEIQoL Index Score and SWB was found to be an important mediating variable in the relationship between PWB and SEIQoL. When analyzing different well-being combinations, respondents with high SWB/high PWB had significantly higher SEIQoL scores than did those with low SWB/low PWB. Respondents with high PWB/high SWB had higher SEIQoL scores than did those with high PWB/low SWB. Longitudinal studies in different patient groups are needed to explore the dynamic relationship between IQoL and well-being. Further investigation of the relationship between PWB and SWB with other instruments purporting to measure QoL would contribute to an enhanced understanding of the underlying nature of QoL.     

Subjective Well-Being in China: Associations with Absolute,Relative, and Perceived Economic Circumstances

Numerous studies examining the impact of income on subjective well-being (SWB) have found significant positive relationships exhibiting decreasing marginal returns. However, the impact of economic circumstances on SWB is better captured through a combination of income, wealth (per capita net worth), and perceived and relative economic conditions. Using data from the Chinese Household Income Project, I find that within rural and urban China, wealth significantly predicts SWB, exhibiting decreasing marginal returns independent of more common measures of economic circumstances such as income and occupational status. Within urban China, these associations decrease in magnitude and significance with the addition of objective relative measures of wealth and income. Finally, I find that subjective perceptions of relative standard of living are strongly associated with SWB independent of other measures. These results highlight the importance of using multiple objective and subjective measures of economic circumstances, demonstrating potential limitations of studies that have focused exclusively on income as a predictor of well-being. Results are interpreted within the context of China’s changing social and economic structure.     

International Comparisons of Trends in Economic Well-being

This paper develops a new measure of economic well-being for selectedOECD countries for the period 1980 to 1996 and compares trends in thisnew Index to GDP per capita. We argue that the economic well-being ofa society depends on the level of average consumption flows, aggregateaccumulation of productive stocks, inequality in the distribution ofindividual incomes and insecurity in the anticipation of future income.However, the weights attached to each component will vary, dependingon the values of different observers. We argue that public debatewould be improved if there is explicit consideration of theaspects of economic well-being obscured by average income trends andif the weights attached to these aspects were made visible and wereopen for discussion.     

Different Things Make Different People Happy: Examining Social Capital and Subjective Well-Being by Gender and Parental Status

This paper addresses a number of key challenges in current subjective well-being (SWB) research: A new wave of studies should take into account that different things may make different people happy, thus going beyond a unitary ‘happiness formula’. Furthermore, empirical results need to be connected to broader theoretical narratives. Using a re-examination of the social context of well-being as its case study, this article therefore resorts to sociological theory and fills a gap by investigating how social capital is correlated in different ways with the SWB of men, women, parents, and non-parents. Ordered logit and OLS regression analyses systematically examine slope heterogeneity using UK data from the European Social Survey. It turns out that civic engagement is not at all associated with higher life satisfaction for mothers, while the relationship is positive for men and strongest for childless women. Moreover, informal socialising is positively and more strongly associated with life satisfaction among women, although only when OLS is used. In sum, the social context of well-being varies considerably by gender and parental status. Mothers do not seem to benefit from formal social capital, indicating a “motherhood penalty” (see Correll et al., Am J Sociol 112(5):1297–1338 in 2007) regarding the psychological rewards usually associated with volunteering. Given the high levels of formal social capital among mothers, the findings also highlight the importance of the homo sociologicus concept. Consequently, SWB research can be successfully used to provide new insights into long-standing interdisciplinary theory debates such as the one on homo economicus versus homo sociologicus.     

National differences in reported subjective well-being: Why do they occur?

There are marked variations between nations in reported subjective well-being (SWB), but the explanations for this diversity have not been fully explored. It is possible that the differences are entirely due to true variability in SWB, but it is also reasonable that the differences may be due to factors related to self-report measurement such as variation across nations in whether it is desirable to say one is happy. At a substantive level, there might be differences in the norms governing the experience of emotion such that cultural differences in SWB are due to affective regulation. Pacific Rim countries (e.g., Japan, the People's Republic of China, and S. Korea) appear to have lower SWB than their material circumstances warrant, and the U.S.A. has higher SWB than is predicted based on its income per person. The genesis of these differences was explored by comparing students in S. Korea, Japan, and the People's Republic of China to students in the U.S.A., and it was concluded that: (1) The Pacific Rim subjects score lower on both happiness and life satisfaction in both absolute terms and when income is controlled, (2) There probably is not a general negative response set in the Pacific Rim which causes lower SWB, as evidenced by the fact that the Asians express dissatisfaction in some areas (e.g., education and self) but not in other areas (e.g., social relationships), (3) Artifacts are not causing the lower reported SWB, (4) The general suppression of mood in the Pacific Rim is unlikely to be the cause of SWB differences, but Chinese students do appear to avoid negative affect, (5) SWB is no less important and salient in Japan and S. Korea, but does appear to be a less central concern in China, and (6) There are different patterns of well-being depending on whether life satisfaction or hedonic balance are considered.