Does society matter?: Life satisfaction in the enlarged Europe
Does society matter?: Life satisfaction in the enlarged Europe
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DOI：
10.1007/s11205-007-9169-4
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发表时间：
2008-06-01
影响因子：
3.1
通讯作者：
Boehnke, Petra
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Boehnke, Petra
生活满意度在扩大后的欧盟各国之间分布不均。之前的研究已经表明，各个国家的生活条件，比如物质和情感资源的获取，对个人幸福有多么重要，但在解释国家之间的差异方面却不太成功。本文调查了人们生活的政治和经济环境是否重要，以及他们对社会环境质量的特殊感知是否起作用。人们清楚地意识到，他们生活所处的体制和文化环境既创造了机会，也产生了限制：在个别国家内，对社会的看法影响着生活满意度的结果，而不管是否获得资源。然而，它们对福祉的重要性在欧洲各地有所不同：在只提供最低限度社会保障和政治制度可靠性较差的国家，对社会的看法具有高度决定性。在富裕和稳定的国家，这种影响较弱，私人社会支持变得更加重要。除了这些生活满意度决定因素的国家特定权重之外，国家之间的生活满意度差异可以在很大程度上通过考虑一个国家的经济表现，社会安全水平和政治文化来解释-总之，使人们能够过上体面生活的一般条件。
Life satisfaction is quite heterogeneously distributed across countries of the enlarged European Union. Previous research has shown how living conditions within individual countries, such as access to material and emotional resources, are important for personal well-being, but it has been less successful in explaining differences between countries. This article investigates whether it matters in which political and economic circumstances people live, as well as whether their particular perception of the quality of their societal environment plays a role. People are well aware that the institutional and cultural settings in which their lives are embedded create opportunities and limitations: within individual countries, perceptions of society influence life satisfaction outcomes irrespective of access to resources. However, their importance for well-being differs across Europe: perceptions of societies are highly decisive in countries that provide only a minimum of social security and in which the reliability of political institutions is poor. In rich and stable countries, the impact is weaker and private social support becomes more important. In addition to these country-specific weights of life satisfaction determinants, life satisfaction variations between countries can be explained to a large extent by taking into consideration the economic performance, the social security level, and the political culture in a country-all in all, general conditions that enable people to live a respectable life.