Social Resources and Life Satisfaction: Country-Specific Effects?

Abstract

Research has identified several factors that affect life satisfaction. The role of the state in this context, however, has been considered in only a few studies. Analyses of the relationships between national policies and life satisfaction have shown that the welfare state functions as a “resource giver” in creating inequalities in people’s quality of life. For this reason, we studied whether and how the effects of social resources on life satisfaction differ from country to country. Applying a multilevel analysis, we examined the resources embedded in networks and personal resources at one level as well as macro-information regarding the welfare state at another level. To this end, we used data from 27 countries drawn from the 2017 Social Networks Module of the International Social Survey Program and the United Nations Human Development Index. The results show that 7.4% of overall variance is at the country level. This can be partly explained by perceived inequality in a country, which we constructed for each country based on individual respondent data. Furthermore, in random-slopes analyses, we find evidence for country-specific effects of one of our central variables, goal attainment.