Browsing by Author "Lehmus-Sun, Annika"

The great amount of both academic and political interest towards subjective well-being causes also demand for a more thorough and comprehensive understanding of the concept. Hence, in the present thesis, a longitudinal data analysis about the relationship between subjective well-being and objective well-being outcomes and opportunities is conducted. The indicators for subjective well-being are happiness and life satisfaction. The indicators for objective well-being are operationalised from two theories. The first theory is Richard Layard’s (2011) Seven Causes for Happiness, which helps to define objective well-being outcomes that may be associated with one’s subjective well-being. The Seven causes for happiness are family relationships, financial situation, work, community and friends, health, per-sonal freedom and personal values. The second theory is the capability approach by Amartya Sen (1993), which enables to study the difference between outcomes and opportunities. The capabilities are mostly about satisfaction in different domains in life (satisfaction with partner, job, household income, social life, neighbourhood, and leisure time), but also financial manageability, health limitations, ability to vote, voluntary and political group memberships. The data are drawn from the British Household Panel Survey, which is a nationally representative longitudinal survey of nearly 10 000 individuals over 16 years of age in the United Kingdom. The analysis is based on 12 waves, which enables to explore whether the objective well-being factors, that might have changed in the life of an individual, have an impact on one’s subjective well-being. In addition, the difference between the two indicators of subjective well-being, that is, happiness and life satisfaction is investigated. Analyses were performed using linear mixed-effects models. The results suggest that the most significant domains associated with better subjective well-being were family relationships, community and friends, and health. Work domain explained happiness almost twice as much than life satisfaction, and personal freedom domain explained life satisfaction better than happiness. Financial situation, personal values and demographics (age and gender) domains received the lowest significance. Compared to the results with the previous studies, the main similarities were with health and social relationships factors, which in the previous studies as well as in the current study were both significantly associated with subjec-tive well-being. The main differences between the results of the present study and the results of the previous studies were with the factors of employment, income, and having a partner. According to the previous studies, having a job, higher income, and having a partner increased one’s subjective well-being, but in the present analyses the directions of the associations were the opposite. The results indicate that the fact that one has a job, higher income or a partner does not bring itself happiness or satisfaction, but the fact that one is satisfied with one’s job, income or partner, does. According to the present analysis, opportunities in general received much higher predicting power than did the outcomes. Consequently, how satisfied one is in certain life domains seem to matter more to overall life satisfaction and happiness than a fixed outcome.