Subjective Well-Being in Context: County- and State-Level Socioeconomic Factors and Individual Moderators

Subjective well-being (SWB) is not only influenced by people’s individual characteristics but also by characteristics of the places where they live. Using data from the Health and Retirement Survey (N 5,975), we examined whether two indicators of the socioeconomic context (unemployment and poverty rates) are associated with SWB in older adults. The main findings were (a) these contextual variables are differentially related to SWB on the county level and state level in terms of strength and direc-tion, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between different levels of analysis; (b) poverty rate tends to be more strongly associated with life satisfaction and positive affect than with negative affect; and (c) county-level poverty rate is more strongly related to positive affect in poor individuals and county-level unemployment rate is more strongly related to SWB in nonretired individuals, suggesting that the socioeconomic context matters more for people who are directly affected by it. Keywords subjective well-being, life satisfaction, affect, socioeconomic context The recent global economic crisis has left millions of people around the world unemployed or in jobs that pay less than before. Economic and social disparities between different regions in North America and Europe have sharpened, with one of the most obvious examples being the contrast between economies such as struggling Greece and thriving Germany. Even within countries, the socioeconomic differences can be stark. For instance, North Italy is substantially wealthier than South Italy (Eurostat, 2012); in the United States, the economy is growing at the East Coast but not in the Southwest (U.S