The importance of social circumstances for Swedish women's subjective wellbeing

Abstract

The importance of social circumstances for middle‐age women's general subjective wellbeing (SWB) was investigated in a representative sample of Swedish women, aged 43 (N = 369). The results showed non‐existent to moderate relationships between a number of social circumstances variables and general SWB. The strongest relationship was found between marital status and global life satisfaction. Being off work because of illness and household income were the strongest predictors of negative affect. A moderate relationship was found between a cumulated social disadvantage index and SWB, indicating that extreme differences in this index were related to fairly large differences in SWB. In person‐oriented analyses, social circumstances were compared between women with a typical profile of generalised low SWB and women with a typical profile of generalised above‐average SWB. The results indicated stronger relationships between SWB and the cumulative disadvantage index and unemployment than was the case in the variable‐oriented analyses. When personality factors were controlled for, they eliminated nearly all relationships between the social circumstances variables and SWB, except for those between global life satisfaction and marital status or unemployment.