Division of Mental and Physical Health, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway.
Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Front Public Health. 2021 Mar 15;9:629118. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.629118. eCollection 2021.
A high level of well-being is associated with personal, community and national income, as well as personal, social and political trust. How these measures relate to each other within and between countries and within and across structural levels of society is largely unknown. To study this, we propose a three-layer nested socio-structural model. Each layer (individual, community, country) contains a measure of income, trust and satisfaction. With this model, we analyzed data from two waves of the European Social Survey (ESS, 2006, 2012) in 19 countries ( = 72,461; weighted = 73,307) with multilevel techniques. Indicators were personal, community, and national income; personal, social and political trust; and personal life satisfaction, social and political satisfaction. Personal life satisfaction was associated with all income and trust variables. Greatest effect on personal life satisfaction, came from the national level, including political trust and income. However, 2/3 of the variance in personal life satisfaction came from income, that is personal, community and national. Within each socio-structural level, satisfaction was associated with income, but significantly modified by trust. When income and trust at all three levels were included, there was a significant association of the national layer on the social layer, and of the social layer on the individual layer as to the income-personal life satisfaction relationship. Consistent with the "the buffer hypothesis," all three forms of trust acted as a buffer against the effect of personal income on life satisfaction. Low-trust countries had strong income-personal life satisfaction associations and the moderating role of trust was also stronger. High- and medium-trust countries had no such associations. Likewise, direct associations between political and personal trust were much stronger in the low-trust countries. The model presented in this study provides authorities with a framework for policies that will improve the general well-being of their population. Trust and income strongly influence personal life satisfaction. Money is the most important. However, trust forcefully dampens the effect of income. Politicians who want to enhance their population's personal life satisfaction, should raise the levels of trust in their electorate.
幸福感水平与个人、社区和国家收入以及个人、社会和政治信任有关。这些措施在国家内部和国家之间以及社会结构层次内部和之间相互关联的方式在很大程度上是未知的。为了研究这一点，我们提出了一个三层嵌套的社会结构模型。每个层（个人、社区、国家）都包含收入、信任和满意度的衡量标准。通过这个模型，我们使用来自欧洲社会调查（ESS）的两个波次的数据进行了分析（2006 年、2012 年，19 个国家，n = 72461；加权 n = 73307），并使用了多层次技术。指标包括个人、社区和国家收入；个人、社会和政治信任；以及个人生活满意度、社会和政治满意度。个人生活满意度与所有收入和信任变量相关。对个人生活满意度影响最大的是国家层面，包括政治信任和收入。然而，个人生活满意度的 2/3 来自收入，即个人、社区和国家。在每个社会结构层次内，满意度与收入相关，但受到信任的显著修正。当所有三个社会结构层次的收入和信任都被包括在内时，国家层面与社会层面之间存在显著的关联，社会层面与个人层面之间也存在关联，这是个人收入与生活满意度之间的关系。与“缓冲假设”一致，所有三种形式的信任都充当了个人收入对生活满意度的影响的缓冲。低信任国家的个人收入与生活满意度之间存在强烈的关联，信任的调节作用也更强。高信任和中等信任国家则没有这种关联。同样，在低信任国家中，政治和个人信任之间的直接关联要强得多。本研究提出的模型为当局提供了一个框架，用于制定将提高其人口总体幸福感的政策。信任和收入强烈影响个人生活满意度。金钱是最重要的。然而，信任有力地抑制了收入的影响。希望提高其选民个人生活满意度的政治家应该提高其选民的信任水平。
