Mediators of the socioeconomic status and life satisfaction relationship in older adults: a multi-country structural equation modeling approach

Abstract

Objectives

Socioeconomic status (SES) relates to life satisfaction in old age, although the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Health and subjective social status have shown to be related to both SES and life satisfaction. This study aims to test the mediating role of health and subjective social status in old age, and to analyze if these potential mediations vary among three European countries with different socioeconomic characteristics and welfare regimes.

Method

The sample comprised 7,272 participants aged 50+ from COURAGE in Europe study, a household survey carried out in 2011–2012 on nationally representative samples from Finland, Poland, and Spain. A Multiple Indicators, Multiple Causes approach based on multi-group Structural Equation Modeling was implemented to test mediating effects.

Results

The structural invariance model showed an adequate fit (CFI = 0.971, RMSEA = 0.061). Health and subjective social status invariantly mediated the relationship between SES and life satisfaction across countries with different socioeconomic characteristics and welfare regimes. SES direct effects explained 0.83–0.85% of life satisfaction variance, whilst indirect effects explained 2.29–2.36% of life satisfaction variance via health, 3.30–3.42% via subjective social status, and 0.06% via both mediating variables.

Conclusion

Policies aimed at increasing the SES of the older adults may entail multiple benefits, resulting in better subjective social status, health, and life satisfaction outcomes, thus fostering healthy aging of the population.

Keywords:

• Subjective wellbeing
• psychological wellbeing
• subjective social position
• evaluative wellbeing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

Data, analytic methods, and study materials are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme under grant number 223071; Instituto de Salud Carlos III-FIS under grant numbers PS09/00295, PS09/01845; co-funded by the European Union, European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) ‘A way to build Europe’ under grant numbers PI12/01490, PI13/00059, PI16/00218, PI16/01073; Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation ACI-Promociona under grant number ACI2009-1010; Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports under grant numbers FPU15/02634 to D.M, FPU16/03276 to J.F.; and Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental (CIBERSAM).