Juana Lamote de Grignon Perez

“Social class and subjective well-being: a cross-country comparison”

abstract

In almost every country, individuals in the upper class enjoy, on average, higher subjective well being (SWB) than individuals in the lower class. However, the size of the SWB gap varies signicantly across countries; in other words, class seems to determine SWB to a greater extent in some places than others (e.g. Hungary or Germany versus Scandinavian countries). This paper attempts to explain why this is so using the third round of the European Social Survey -where SWB was comprehensively measured-. We try to explain class di erences in SWB with four factors that have been shown to a ect SWB and that are unequally distributed across social classes: health, safety, social life and labour market status. Preliminary ndings suggest that the di erences in SWB between the upper and the lower class are almost entirely driven by di erences in em- ployment levels and health.