Subjective well-being in rural and urban Italy

Abstract

Individual well-being is a multidimensional concept based on physical and psychological dimensions. As far as psychological well-being is concerned, there are several factors affecting its value, including income, age, gender, education, civic status and employment. One of the most interesting variables which has been considered in the literature is related to the place of residence, differentiating the urban and rural settings. The purpose of this population-based country study is to examine the association between subjective individual well-being and urban and rural areas in Italy, comparing the data of two survey waves (run in 2008 and 2018) in a statistically significant sample of 1,500 citizens among the Italian population. At a general level, in ten years some variables have changed, but if in 2008 the score for perceived well-being was higher in the rural context, in 2018 results show a similar level of subjective well-being among rural and urban dwellers. The results reveal even more interesting aspects when one looks at the variation of the determinants of well-being in the two areas, showing that some immaterial aspects, such as social relations and cultural life, become relevant determinants of subjective well-being for both contexts, independently from the differences in the cultural and social supply in the rural and the urban life.