Contextual Social Trust and Well-Being Inequality: From the Perspectives of Education and Income
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Contextual Social Trust and Well‑Being Inequality: From the Perspectives of Education and Income Naoki Akaeda1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract In recent decades, much attention has been paid to subjective well-being (SWB). Extensive research in several fields has frequently examined the determinants of SWB, and previous studies have reported well-being inequality within countries due to education and household income. However, knowledge regarding how well-being inequality due to education and household income varies among countries is limited. To fill this gap, this paper examines whether contextual social trust as a country characteristic reduces well-being inequality due to education and household income. This analysis employs repeated cross-sectional international comparative data from four waves of the European Quality of Life Survey conducted between 2003 and 2016 and two types of multilevel modeling, namely, three-level multilevel models with year fixed effects and cross-classified full models, to examine the cross-level interaction effects of contextual social trust and education and of contextual social trust and household income on SWB. By conducting an international comparative analysis, the present study has found that contextual social trust has negative moderation effects on the association between education and SWB and the association between household income and SWB. These results indicate that high contextual social trust reduces well-being inequality due to education and household income by improving the SWB of citizens with lower positions. Keywords Contextual social capital · Well-being inequality · Education · Household income · Comparative longitudinal survey data · Three-level multilevel modeling
1 Introduction In various disciplines, such as sociology, economics, political science, psychology and epidemiology, subjective well-being (SWB) has frequently been examined over recent decades (Helliwell and Putnam 2004; Dolan et al. 2008). According to significant studies, SWB is represented by happiness and life satisfaction (Diener et al. 2002; Vanassche et al. 2013). Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1090 2-019-00209-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Naoki Akaeda akaeda@kansai‑u.ac.jp 1
Faculty of Sociology, Kansai University, 3‑3‑35 Yamate‑cho, Suita‑shi, Osaka 564‑8680, Japan
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N. Akaeda
In SWB studies with a focus on individual characteristics, extensive research has been conducted to identify the determinants of SWB (Helliwell and Putnam 2004; Dolan et al. 2008). Above all, previous articles have reported a robust association between socio-economic status (SES), such as education and income, and SWB (Blanchflower and Oswald 2004; Dolan et al. 2008; Andersen 2009). In other words, by drawing attention to the main effects of educational attainment and income on SWB, previous studies have revealed the existence of well-being inequality due to SES in m
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