The influence of objective and subjective social class on subjective well-being: a meta-analytic review

Debates surrounding the varying link between social class and subjective well-being (SWB) have pointed to limitations of the objective measures of social class in elucidating the precise influence of material resources on SWB. This has resulted in a shift toward examining one's perception of economic standing relative to others, or subjective social class, and how it relates to SWB. The present meta-analysis sought to achieve two goals: First, to provide an estimate of the overall effects yielded by both objective and social class indices, thereby testing the relativity hypothesis that predicts that subjective social class relates to SWB more strongly than objective social class. Second, to elucidate the relevance and utility of each index in influencing SWB by examining moderators that would influence how strongly the objective and subjective social class index relates to SWB. The current meta-analysis included 334 independent samples, with the inclusion of more recent samples compared to earlier meta-analyses. The results revealed that the subjective social class-SWB association (r = .21) was about twice as large as the objective social class-SWB association (r = .11), supporting the relativity hypothesis. Furthermore, the subjective social class-SWB association was relatively stable across moderators compared to the objective social class-SWB association. Implications of these findings on social class and SWB research are discussed