Demographic Predictors of Complete Well-Being

Abstract

This paper examines demographic differences in flourishing, defined as “complete well-being” and consisting of six domains: emotional health, physical health, purpose, character strengths, social connectedness, and financial security. Results are based on a random, cross-sectional sample of 2363 survey respondents drawn from employees of a large, national, self-insured employer based in the United States. We found that well-being across domains tends to increase with age, although there are some variations. Results are similar across most domains for men and women, although women score higher on character strengths, while men had higher scores on financial security. Racial and ethnic differences were striking. Black employees score higher than the reference group (White employees) on the emotional, purpose, and character strengths domains, but considerably lower on financial security. Hispanics also score lower on financial security (though not as low as Blacks), but higher than Whites on purpose, character strengths, and social connectedness. Asians reported higher well-being than Whites across all domains except purpose.