Effects of Income on Subjective Well-Being in the Elderly: Complete Mediation Roles of Self-Rated Health and Psychological Capital

Abstract

Although income and living conditions of residents have greatly improved in recent years, people’s subjective well-being does not seem to increase daily. This study aimed to explore income, self-rated health, and psychological capital on subjective well-being, using data from the China General Social Survey conducted in 2017. A total of 1136 elderly as subsamples data were selected from 12 582 participants, involving general sociodemographic characteristics, income, self-rated health, psychological capital, and subjective well-being. SPSS v26.0 macro was used for descriptive statistics, ANOVA and correlation analysis. PROCESS v3.4 macro was performed to examine multiple mediating effects of self-rated health and psychological capital. The elderly residing in urban ( P = .016) and having completed 9-year compulsory education ( P = .016) reported higher subjective well-being scores. The findings revealed that subjective well-being was positively associated with income, health, and psychological capital among the aged adults (all P < .001). Self-rated health and psychological capital played complete mediation roles between income and subjective well-being (Effect indirect = 0.040, 95% bootstrap CI [0.022, 0.060]; Effect indirect = 0.027, 95% bootstrap CI [0.013, 0.044], respectively). Collectively, our findings indicate that residing in rural and having lower education levels serve as negative predictors of subjective well-being among the elderly. Although income still affects the elderly’s subjective well-being, self-rated health and psychological capital may be the crucial mediating factors. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to improve health conditions and positive psychological capital for subjective well-being of the older people.