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International Determinants of Subjective Well-Being: Living in a Subjectively Material World

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Abstract

Researchers, policymakers, and the general public increasingly agree on the importance of subjective well-being as an indicator of individual and societal welfare. A vast literature has emerged over the last twenty years documenting the many variables that influence subjective well-being. The purpose of this study is to quantify the relative importance of these determinants in an attempt to synthesize the main strands in the literature and inform policy formulations. We use in our analysis three years’ worth of data from the Gallup World Poll, including 153 countries and ten geopolitical regions. We estimate the relative importance of four major domains of subjective well-being using a basic model with 25 independent variables, and a broader set of seven domains using an extended model with 60 independent variables. Our results show that material well-being is the main determinant of subjective well-being across all ten geopolitical regions. A particularly strong determinant of subjective well-being in our study is feelings about household income, whereas community functioning, governance and altruistic behaviors have a relatively low importance. Our results suggest that subjective material well-being and its objective determinants, including economic growth and income inequality, should remain at the center of the research and policy agenda. Further research is recommended to ascertain the relative importance of social, physical and purpose well-being.

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Map framework: Daniel Dalet, D-Maps.com (http://d-maps.com/)

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Notes

  1. Including income, satisfaction with standard of living and ownership of luxury conveniences such as televisions, computers, and the Internet.

  2. See http://www.gallup.com/178667/gallup-world-poll-work.aspx for further methodological details.

  3. Life satisfaction measured using the following item: “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days? Use a 0 to 10 scale, where 0 is dissatisfied and 10 is satisfied.”.

  4. For further details, see Gallup Global Report: Where the Great Jobs are (2015). http://www.gallup.com/services/186200/gallup-global-report-great-jobs.aspx.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Gallup for providing access to the Gallup World Poll data. We are particularly grateful to our Gallup colleagues that provided logistic support and feedback on this manuscript, including Julie Ray, Rajesh Srinivasan, Andrew Rzepa, Jon Clifton, Stafford Nichols and Jihad Fakhreddine.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Gallup Organization, Washington DC, USA

    Pablo Diego-Rosell & James Bird

  2. ICF, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Robert Tortora

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  1. Pablo Diego-Rosell
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Correspondence to Pablo Diego-Rosell.

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Diego-Rosell, P., Tortora, R. & Bird, J. International Determinants of Subjective Well-Being: Living in a Subjectively Material World. J Happiness Stud 19, 123–143 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-016-9812-3

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