This article explores the relationship between individuals’ satisfaction with their social life and global life satisfaction during periods of economic prosperity and crisis, using data from the Panel of Social Inequalities in Catalonia, Spain (PaD 2001–2012). The study also investigates how this relationship varies across different social origins. Catalonia is a pertinent context due to its significant increase in inequality and unemployment during the 2008 Economic Crisis, positioning it among the most affected regions in Europe. The findings reveal that satisfaction with one’s social life matters for global life satisfaction, even after accounting for individual and macro characteristics. However, contrary to the initial expectations, the study demonstrates that satisfaction with one’s social life becomes less influential for global life satisfaction during the macroeconomic crisis, particularly among individuals from middle and low social origins. Furthermore, while a strong positive relationship exists between satisfaction with one’s social life and global life satisfaction during times of economic prosperity for all social groups, a robust negative relationship emerges in periods of macroeconomic crisis for individuals from high social origins. The article offers several potential explanations for these findings.
Furthermore, robustness checks considering 2008 as a year of economic crisis indicate that the macrocrisis dummy then has a positive relationship with subjective well-being. This result confirms that it is better to exclude 2008 as a crisis year (see Appendix 1).
Appendix 3 shows that although being unemployed interacts positively with the 2008 Economic Crisis, the main effect of being unemployed remains negative.
The triple interaction between social life, the 2008 Economic Crisis and social origin with the whole sample also shows the same qualitative nature of results.
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I am grateful for the very helpful comments received by Josep Espasa Reig, Adrian Nieto Castro and Robin Samuel. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Children and Youth and the Luxembourg National Research Fund [grant number 147204589]. I also certify that the manuscript has been edited for proper English language, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and overall style by two highly qualified native English-speaking editors at Springer Nature Author Services (verification code: A407-D2D6-1CA9-122A-2678).
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Department of Social Sciences, University of Luxembourg, Campus Belval, Porte des Sciences, 11, 4366, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
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Fernandez-Urbano, R. Dancing in the Dark: Social Life and Life Satisfaction in Times of Economic Prosperity and Crisis.
Soc Indic Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-024-03311-0
