Psychological characteristics of life satisfaction. Life satisfaction

Are we happy today? Were we happy before? How satisfied are representatives of different communities with their lives? How does our living conditions affect this?

These questions are important for each of us. But how difficult it is to answer them! Today, life satisfaction and happiness are of central interest in social science research, including “mainstream” economics.

Sociologists often recommend complementing measures of subjective well-being with measures of economic well-being, such as GDP per capita.

But how to measure happiness? Are there any reliable comparative characteristics happiness in time and space that can explain what makes us happy?

In this article we* will discuss theoretical and empirical data that will help answer these questions (*hereinafter on behalf of the authors).

Here's a quick overview of the article

1. Satisfaction and happiness surveys measure subjective well-being fairly accurately.

2. Levels of satisfaction and happiness vary widely both within and across countries.

3. People who are more affluent are more likely to say they are happy than people who are less affluent. Richer countries tend to have higher average levels of population happiness.

4. Important life events affect our level of happiness only in the short term, which indicates the tendency of people to adapt to change.

I. EMPIRICAL APPROACH

I.1 Cross-country comparisons

Level of happiness in the world, comparison by country

The 2017 World Happiness Report was compiled using data from the Gallup Worldwide Poll, a collection of nationally representative surveys conducted in more than 160 countries in more than 140 languages. The main Gallup Poll question reads:

"Cantril's Staircase"

« Imagine a staircase with steps numbered 0 (at the bottom) to 10 (at the top). The top step represents the best life possible for you, the bottom step represents the worst possible life. possible life. What rung of the ladder do you feel you are on now?”(Also known as Cantril's Ladder).

The map below shows the average responses of respondents to this question in different countries. Like the steps of a ladder, the values ​​in the card range from 0 to 10.

There are large differences between countries.
In 2016, the Nordic countries top the rankings, with Finland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Iceland having the highest scores (all with average scores above 7). In the same year, the Central African Republic had the lowest national scores. South Sudan, Tanzania, Rwanda and Haiti (all with average scores below 3.5).

It turns out that self-assessment of life satisfaction correlates with other indicators of well-being:

wealthier and more prosperous countries tend to have higher average happiness scores.

Changes in Long-Term Life Satisfaction — World Value Survey Results

The World Value Survey collects data from a number of representative national population surveys of nearly 100 countries, with the earliest estimates going back to 1981.

As we see, in most countries the trend is positive:
In 49 of 69 countries, data from two or more surveys showed a significant increase in earlier results.

In Zimbabwe, the proportion of those who are “very happy” or “fairly happy” increased from 56.4% in 2004 to 82.1% in 2014.

Changes in happiness over the long term — Eurobarometer results

(*translator's note - a series of public opinion polls conducted on behalf of the European Commission since 1973 in EU member states)

In a number of countries, studies have been conducted annually for more than 40 years. The table below shows the proportion of people who are “very satisfied” or “fairly satisfied” with their standard of living.

Two points should be especially emphasized. First, life satisfaction scores often fluctuate within trends. In France, for example, the general trend from 1974 to 2016 is positive, although not without its ups and downs. Second, despite temporary fluctuations, ten-year trends are generally positive for most European countries.

In most cases, the percentage of those “very satisfied” or “fairly satisfied” increased over the entire study period. However, there are some obvious exceptions, one of which is Greece. Add Greece to the graph and you'll see that in 2007, about 67% of Greeks said they were satisfied with their lives; but 5 years later, after the financial crisis, the corresponding figure had dropped to 32.4%. Despite recent improvements, Greeks today are, on average, much less satisfied with their lives than before the financial crisis. No other European country in this sample experienced a comparable negative shock.

Above average. Distribution of life satisfaction ratings

Most country studies on “happiness” and satisfaction focus on average indicators. However, distributional differences are also important.

The table below shows the distribution of the responses received between steps of the ladder. In each case, the height of the bars is proportional to the survey response rate. The distribution of colors corresponds to the distribution by country. For each region, for comparison, we additionally indicated the “distribution of satisfaction” in the world.

These graphs show the distribution of satisfaction levels in sub-Saharan Africa — the region with the lowest average scores — these graphs are located to the left of the satisfaction graphs in Europe. This means that the distribution of scores in European countries stochastically dominates over the distribution of scores in sub-Saharan Africa.

This means that the share of “happy” people in sub-Saharan Africa is significantly lower than that in Western Europe, no matter which Ladder score we use as the threshold for defining “happy.” Similar findings can be obtained by comparing data from other regions with high averages (e.g. North America, Australia and New Zealand) with regions showing a lower average score (for example, South Asia).

It should be noted that the distribution of satisfaction in Latin America itself is high in all respects — it consistently lies to the right of other regions with roughly comparable income levels, such as Central and Eastern Europe. Latin American countries tend to have higher subjective satisfaction than other countries with comparable levels economic development. Next, in the section on the social environment, we will show that culture and history play an important role in shaping the level of satisfaction with life.

(In)correct perception of the happiness of others

We tend to underestimate the average level of happiness of those around us. Here are the results of a survey conducted by the International Institute of Marketing and Sociological Research Ipsos (Ipsos Perils of Perception), where respondents are asked to guess what others would answer to a question about happiness in the World Value Survey.

The horizontal axis shows the actual share of those who are “very happy” or “fairly happy” according to the World Value Survey. The vertical line shows the average " a guess" the same number (i.e., the one that respondents made regarding the share of those who answered that they were “very happy” or “quite happy” in their country).

If the respondents guessed correctly, then all observations would fall on the red line at 45 degrees. But, as we see, all countries’ indicators are significantly below 45 degrees. In other words, people in every country underestimated their happiness ratings. The most extreme deviations were found in Asia — South Koreans tend to think that 24% of people report that they are happy, but in reality — 90%.

The highest percentage of correct guesses in this sample (Canada and Norway) is 60%. This is lower than the lowest actual happiness score of any other country in the sample (which matches Hungary's score at 69%).

Why do people get so wrong? It may be that we tend to misreport our own happiness, so good guesses on average may be a good predictor of true satisfaction (and a poor predictor of our own satisfaction). However, for these measures to be reliable, people would have to misreport their own happiness while assuming that other respondents are correct.

In addition, it is believed that “happiness ratings” given by friends are more accurate (see below), and that respondents tend to be good at assessing emotions simply by observing facial expressions (see below).

Therefore, it is likely that people tend to have positive attitudes toward themselves but negative attitudes toward strangers.

In addition, it was noted that people can be optimistic about their future and at the same time deeply pessimistic about the future of their nation or the world. We discuss this phenomenon in more detail in our article on optimism and pessimism (see the section on individual optimism and social pessimism).

I.2 Within-country indicators

Unequal satisfaction in East and West Germany

The map below shows life satisfaction scores in Germany (based on the Cantril Ladder), summing up the averages of the federal states. The first thing that strikes you is the clear division between Germany's East and West in the course of its political division that existed before reunification in 1990.

Several academic papers have examined this “happiness gap” in Germany in more detail, using data from, for example, the German Socio-Economic Group (Petrunik and Pfeiffer, 2016). These studies offer two main ideas:

Firstly, the “gap” in last years is reduced, which is true both for average differences and for “conditional differences”, which can be assessed after taking into account socio-economic and demographic parameters. See how the “gap” has closed since reunification in these maps by Petrunyk and Pfeifer (2016).

Second, differences in household income and unemployment status are important factors affecting satisfaction. Why then, even after taking into account these and other parameters, the gap between East and West remains significant. This is due to a broader empirical phenomenon:

culture and history are important for life satisfaction.

In particular, former communist countries tend to have lower subjective satisfaction ratings than other countries with comparable levels of economic development (see section on social environment).

Unequal satisfaction in the US and other developed countries

The General Society Survey (GSS) in the United States has been conducted annually since 1972. About 1,500 respondents were surveyed.

Using this source, Stevenson and Wolfers (2008) show that,

although the national average has remained broadly constant, inequality in life satisfaction in the United States has declined substantially in recent decades.

The authors also note that this statement is true both when looking at inequality in satisfaction and in terms of response dispersion, and when looking at inequality in terms of gaps between demographic groups.

2/3 of the “black-white” gap in life satisfaction in the US has decreased, and the gap between “happiness levels” for women has been completely eliminated (women used to be somewhat happier than men. Now women’s happiness levels are declining, and today there is no statistical difference when controlling other characteristics).

Today, white Americans remain happier on average, even after accounting for differences in education and income.

Stevenson and Wolfers' results are consistent with other studies examining changes in "happiness inequality" (or inequality in life satisfaction) over time. In particular, the researchers noted that

there is a relationship between economic growth and the reduction of “happiness inequality” — even as income inequality increases at the same time.

The chart below, from Clark, Fleche, and Senik (2015), visualizes the evolution of “happiness inequality” in a survey conducted in developed countries, which experienced continuous GDP growth.

In this chart, “happiness inequality” is measured by the degree of dispersion, namely the standard deviation of responses to the World Value Survey. As we can see, there is a broad negative trend. In their article, the authors show that this trend is positive for countries with declining GDP.

Why do indicators of “happiness inequality” decrease as income inequality increases?

Clark, Flesch and Senik argue that one reason is that rising national income allows for greater provision of public goods, which in turn limits the distribution of subjective welfare. This situation may also be consistent with rising income inequality, as public goods such as improved health have different effects on income and well-being.

But it is also possible that economic growth in developed countries will be distributed in a more diverse society in terms of cultural expressions, allowing people to “converge” on higher “levels of happiness” even if they “diverge” in income, tastes and consumption (see . data in an article in the New York Times).

I. CORRELATIONS, DETERMINATES AND CONSEQUENCES

II.1 Income

The relationship between higher national income and increased average life satisfaction

If we compare reports of life satisfaction around the world at any given point in time, we immediately see that respondents in richer countries tend to report higher life satisfaction than those in poorer countries (see chart below).

Each point in the diagram corresponds to a different country. The vertical arrangement of the dots shows the approximate national average for life satisfaction on the Cantril Ladder; while the horizontal layout shows GDP per capita on a purchasing power equality basis (i.e. GDP per capita after adjusting for inflation and price differences across countries).

This correlation holds even when we control for other factors: Richer countries tend to have higher life satisfaction than poorer countries.

The relationship between higher incomes and higher life satisfaction

It was stated above that the richer the country, the higher the level of happiness of its population, and vice versa. Here we will show that the same is true for the situation within countries:

Rich people tend to be happier than poor people within a country.

In the tables below, we prove the relationship between income and happiness through income quintiles. Each panel in the table represents an associated scatterplot of data for a specific country. This means that for each country we observe a line connecting five points: each point corresponds to the average income in income quintiles (horizontal axis) from the average life satisfaction in that income quintile (vertical axis).

What does this table tell us? We see that in all cases the lines are ascending: respondents with higher incomes tend to have higher average levels of life satisfaction. However, in some countries the lines are more curved and linear (for example, in Costa Rica, the richer are happier than the poorer across the entire income distribution); while in other countries the lines are less curved and non-linear (for example, the richest group people in Dominican Republic as happy as the second-richest group).

The table on the left shows the same data, but instead of plotting each country separately, it shows all countries in one grid.

The resulting graph may seem a bit confusing, reminiscent of a spaghetti graph, but it confirms the complex pattern: despite kinks here and there, the lines tend to point upward.

Do income and happiness levels correlate? - YES, they correlate, both within a country and between countries.

Just by taking a quick glance at the following table, you will see the key data derived from the previous three tables.

To show the relationship between income and happiness in different countries, the relationship between life satisfaction (on the vertical axis) and GDP per capita (on the horizontal axis) is plotted here. Each country is represented by an arrow on the grid, and the location of the arrow tells us the corresponding combination of average income and happiness.

To show the relationship between income and happiness inside countries, each arrow has a slope corresponding to the correlation between household income and life satisfaction within that country. In other words: the slope of the arrow indicates how strong the relationship is between income and life satisfaction within that country (see table on the left).

If the arrow points northeast, it means that richer people tend to report higher life satisfaction than poorer people in the same country. If the arrow is horizontal (that is, pointing east), this means that rich people are, on average, as happy as poor people in the same country.

As we can see, there is a very clear pattern: rich countries tend to be happier than poor countries (observations center around an upward trend), and richer people in countries tend to be happier than poorer people in the same countries (arrows consistently directed to the northeast).

It is important to note that the horizontal axis is measured on a logarithmic scale. Cross-country income-happiness relationships do not have a one-way relationship with income (this relationship is “log-linear”). We use a logarithmic scale to highlight two key facts: (i) at no point in the global income distribution is the relationship horizontal; and (ii) a doubling of average income is associated with approximately the same increase in life satisfaction, regardless of world distribution position.

These results have been studied in more detail in a number of recent academic research. It is important to note that in the work cited by Stevenson and Wolfers (2008), these correlations also hold after controlling for country characteristics, such as population demographics, and are robust to different data sources and measures of personal well-being.

Economic growth and happiness levels

Let's try to prove that as countries become richer, the population tends to report higher average life satisfaction.

This table uses data from the World Value Survey to determine the evolution of average national income and "average national happiness" over time. This shows the ratio of the share of those who are “very happy” or “very satisfied” according to the World Value Survey (vertical axis) to GDP per capita (horizontal axis). Each country is drawn as a line connecting the first and last available observations across all waves of the study.

We see that countries experiencing economic growth also tend to increase their “happiness levels” according to the World Value Survey. This correlation holds after controlling for other factors that also vary over time (see this graph from Stevenson and Wolfers (2008) for the correlation of GDP per capita with changes in life satisfaction after controlling for changes in demographic structure and other variables).

It is important to note here that economic growth and growth in “happiness levels” are generally interrelated. Some countries experience economic growth during certain periods without an increase in “happiness levels.”

Considering the evidence, the US experience over recent decades is quite revealing.

Easterlin's paradox

Economic growth does not always correlate with increased satisfaction. This claim was first made by Richard Easterlin in the 1970s. Since then, much discussion has been devoted to this issue, now known as the Easterlin Paradox.

The paradox was based on the fact that

Richer countries tend to have higher “happiness levels,” but in some countries that were re-surveyed in the 1970s, “happiness levels” did not increase with income.

This combination of empirical evidence was paradoxical because the cross-country data (countries with higher incomes tended to have higher “happiness levels”) were, in some cases, inconsistent with the actual data over time. Interestingly, Easterlin and other researchers relied on data from the United States and Japan to confirm this seemingly puzzling observation. However, if we take a closer look at the data underlying the trends in these two countries, they no longer seem so paradoxical.

Graph from Easterlin and Angelescu 2011

Let's start with Japan. There, the most available data on satisfaction was obtained from the so-called “Life in nation surveys” for 1958. These studies show that average life satisfaction has remained constant during a period of impressive economic growth. However, not all so simple.

Stevenson and Wolfers (2008) show that life satisfaction questions in the National Life Survey have changed over time, making it difficult, if not impossible, to track changes in “happiness levels” over the entire period.

The table on the left breaks down life satisfaction data from surveys into “sub-periods” that never answer the question. As we can see, the data does not confirm the paradox: the relationship between GDP and growth in happiness in Japan is direct during comparable study periods.

The reason for the supposed paradox is actually a misidentification of how "happiness levels" have changed over time.

In the situation with the USA, the explanation is different. In particular, if we look more closely at economic growth in the United States over recent decades, one fact looms large: growth has not benefited most people. Income inequality in the United States is exceptionally high and has been increasing over the past four decades, with the income of the average household growing much more slowly than the income of the top 10% of the population. As a result, trends in overall satisfaction should not be seen as paradoxical: the income and standard of living of the typical US citizen have not increased over the past several decades (you can read more about this in the article on inequality and income distribution).

II.2 HEALTH

Life expectancy and satisfaction

Health is an important predictor of life satisfaction, both within and between countries. Each point in the diagram below represents one country. The vertical position of the dots shows the national life expectancy from birth, and the horizontal position shows the national average value of life satisfaction according to the Cantril Ladder (a scale from 0 to 10, where 10 is the highest possible life satisfaction).

As we can see from the graph, there is a strong positive correlation: countries where people live longer are also countries where people are more likely to say they are satisfied with their lives. Similar relationships hold for other health outcomes (for example, life satisfaction tends to be higher in countries with lower child mortality).

The relationships shown in the graph clearly reflect more than just the relationship between health and “happiness”, as countries with high life expectancy also tend to have many other characteristic features. However, the positive correlation between life expectancy and life satisfaction remains after controlling for country-specific parameters such as income and social protection.

Mental health and happiness levels

By examining the correlation between physical illness and other factors, such as income and education, in the table below we see measures of the degree (with each column indicating the degree of interdependence) to which mental illness (depression and anxiety disorders) are associated with satisfaction scores.

These are "conditional correlations" - they correspond to the relationship between two variables after controlling for the factors listed in the footnote to the table. Negative values ​​indicate that people who have been diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorders are more likely to have lower life satisfaction.

The size of the coefficients, especially in the US and Australia, tells us that the relationships we observe are very strong.

For reference, in the UK, US and Australia the correlation between mental illness and life satisfaction is higher than the correlation between income and life satisfaction.

Obviously, this correlation is the result of two-way relationships:

Those suffering from depression and anxiety disorders are less likely to feel happy;

Those who consider themselves unhappy are more likely to experience depression or anxiety disorders. However, it is still important to remember that anxiety, depression and feeling unhappy often go hand in hand.

II.3 LIFE EVENTS

How do life events affect your happiness?

Do people tend to adapt to life situations by returning to a basic “level of happiness”?

Clark (2008) uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to identify groups of people who experience a variety of life and work events and to trace how these events influence the evolution of their life satisfaction.

The red lines in the table in each individual graph indicate the estimated effect for different events at a given point in time (the hair lines indicate the confidence range of each estimate).

In all cases, the results were stratified by gender and times were labeled so that “0” indicated the moment when the corresponding event occurred (with negative and positive values, indicating the years before and after the event). All estimates take individual characteristics into account, so the data shows the impact of an event after controlling for other factors
(for example, income, etc.).

First, it should be noted that most events indicate the evolution of a latent situation: people become unhappy in the period before divorce, while they become happy already in the period before marriage.

Second, single events in life tend to affect happiness in the short term, and people often adapt to these changes. Of course, there are clear differences in how people adapt. In the case of divorce, life satisfaction first falls, then rises and remains high. There is a negative shock to unemployment in both the short and long term, especially among men. And for marriage, life satisfaction builds up and disappears after marriage.

Overall, the evidence suggests that adaptation is important characteristic satisfaction. Many common but important life events have moderate long-term effects on satisfaction scores. However, adaptation to events such as long-term unemployment is neither absolute nor immediate.

Is disability related to satisfaction?

A number of studies have noted that long-term paraplegia per se does not correlate with satisfaction (see, for example, the often cited article by Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman, 1978).

(*translator's note: paraplegia - paralysis of both lower or both upper limbs)

This statement caught our attention because it speaks to the very meaning of satisfaction and has important implications for the general issue. For example, when considering in court regarding compensation for disability.

Comparing differences in satisfaction among people with different degrees of disability is not an ideal source of evidence for the impact of a tragic situation on happiness. People with paraplegia potentially differ from those without paraplegia in ways that are difficult to measure. The best source of evidence is from long-life studies (longitudinal studies), in which people are followed over time.

Oswald and Powdthavee (2008) use data from a UK longitudinal study to explore whether accidents and subsequent disability lead to long-term disruption and life dissatisfaction.

The graph compiled by Oswald and Paudthave shows the average satisfaction of a group of people who became severely disabled (at time T) and remained disabled for the next two years (T + 1 and T + 2). Where "severe disability" means that the disability prevents them from performing daily activities.

As we see — and as the authors point out, more accurately using econometric methods — those who become disabled experience a sharp decline in satisfaction and recover only partially. This confirms the assumption that

Although adaptation plays a role for general life events, the concept of life satisfaction is indeed sensitive to tragic events.

II.4 SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT

Correlation between culture and life satisfaction

The relationship between happiness levels between countries suggests that culture and history are important to life satisfaction. For example, as the chart below shows, Latin American countries have higher levels of satisfaction relative to other countries with comparable levels of economic development due to their cultural and historical background.

This chart shows satisfaction measured on Cantril's ten-tier ladder vertically against GDP per capita horizontally.

Here Latin America is not a special case. For example, former communist countries tend to have lower life satisfaction scores relative to other countries with comparable characteristics and levels of economic development.

Academic research in positive psychology discusses other models. Diener and Suh (2002) write: “In recent years, the impact of cultural differences on satisfaction has been studied, recognizing that there are profound differences in what makes people happy. For example, self-esteem is less strongly related to life satisfaction, and extraversion is less strongly associated with beneficial affect in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures."

To our knowledge, there are no rigorous studies examining the causal mechanisms linking culture and life satisfaction. However, it seems natural to expect that cultural factors shape how people collectively understand happiness and meaning in life.

The relationship between feelings of freedom and satisfaction

The society we live in can dramatically change the availability of what we can do with our lives.

The table below shows the relationship between feelings of freedom and satisfaction according to the Gallup Poll. The variable measuring satisfaction corresponds to the average values ​​of the Cantril Ladder; while the variable measuring the feeling of freedom corresponds to the proportion of people who agree with the statement: “ In this country I am happy with my freedom to choose what I do with my life».

As we can see, there are clear positive relationships: countries where you can freely choose and control your life tend to be countries where people are happier. As Inglehart et al. (2008) show, this positive relationship persists even after we control for other factors such as income and religiosity.

Interestingly, this table also shows that although there is a sense of freedom in some countries, average satisfaction is low (for example, in Rwanda); There are no countries where perceived freedom is low and average life satisfaction is high (i.e. there are no countries in the top left corner of the chart).

To our knowledge, there are no rigorous studies of the causal mechanisms linking feelings of freedom and happiness. However, it seems natural to expect that self-determination and lack of coercion are important components of what people consider to be a happy and meaningful life.

The connection between media and sadness

Johnston and Davey (1997) conducted an experiment in which they edited short television news stories to show positive, neutral, or negative material and then showed them to three different groups of people. The authors found that people who watched the “negative” material , were more likely to report a sad mood.

This link between emotional content in the news and changes in mood is all the more important if we believe that media censorship favors negative or positive coverage of newsworthy facts (see, for example, Combs and Slovic 1979).

Of course, mood is not the same as satisfaction from life. However, as we discuss below, surveys that measure happiness often capture the emotional aspects of satisfaction. And in any case, people's perception of the significance of life depends to a large extent on their expectations of what is possible and likely to happen in their lives.

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III. DATA QUALITY AND MEASUREMENT

Is it possible to measure happiness?

The most natural way to try to measure satisfaction is to ask people what they think and feel.

Some social scientists tend to measure experiential or emotional aspects of satisfaction (e.g., “I feel very happy”), while others tend to study evaluative or cognitive aspects of satisfaction (e.g., “I think that I lead very positive life"). It is known that own opinion people's perceptions of happiness and contentment are correlated with things they typically associate with satisfaction, such as cheerfulness and smiling.

Experimental psychologists have also shown that self-reports of satisfaction, based on surveys, appear to be associated with the activity of those parts of the brain that are responsible for feelings of pleasure and satisfaction.

Various surveys have confirmed that people who say they are happy also tend to sleep better and verbally express positive emotions more often.

The table in Kahneman and Krueger (2006) provides a list of variables that researchers have found to be related to happiness and life satisfaction.

Correlations between high satisfaction and “happiness”

Smile frequency

Smile with the eyes (“genuine smile”)

Happiness as measured by friends

Frequent verbal expression of positive emotions

Sociability and extroversion

Sleep quality

Happiness of close relatives

Self-assessment of health

Are “life satisfaction” and “feeling happy” the same thing?

It is important to remember that satisfaction and happiness are not synonymous.

The chart above shows that these two dimensions are closely related to each other (countries that score high on one dimension also tend to score high on the other dimensions), but they are not identical (there is significant variance, with many countries using one and the same result for one variable showed a different result for another variable).

The differences in responses to the questions are consistent with the idea that subjective satisfaction has two sides: experiential or emotional, evaluative or cognitive.

Of course, the boundaries between emotional and cognitive dimensions of well-being are blurred in our minds; Therefore, in practice, both types of questions measure both parameters to varying degrees.

Are average measures of “happiness” really meaningful?

The most common way to analyze happiness data is to average the values ​​across groups of people.

Is it reasonable to take average ratings of life satisfaction? Or, speaking technical terms: Are the Cantril Ladder results truly a cardinal measure of well-being?

The evidence tells us that results based on the Cantril Ladder questions do provide clear measurements — respondents were able to translate verbal labels such as “very good” and “very bad” into approximately the same numerical values.

But as with any aggregate measure of social progress, averages must be interpreted carefully, even if they make arithmetical sense.

For example, if we look at "happiness" in terms of age in a given country, we can see that older people do not appear happier than younger people. However, this may be because the age-at-moment average confounds two factors: the age effect (people in the same group become happier as they get older, across all groups) and the group effect (at all ages, older generations less happy than younger generations). If the group effect is very strong, then the situation in the moment shows that people become less happy as they age, when in fact the opposite is true, in fact this is true for all ages.

This example is actually taken from real life: Data from the United States (Sutin et al. (2013)) showed that satisfaction levels tend to increase with age across generations, but overall levels of satisfaction depend on the period in which people were born.

How important is language for cross-country comparisons of “happiness”?

Linguistic differences are often seen as one of the main obstacles to comparative studies of happiness across countries. However, there is evidence to suggest that comparability issues, at least with regard to language, are less complex than many people think.

For example, research has shown that in surveys where respondents are shown photographs or videos of other people, respondents can broadly determine whether the person shown to them was happy or sad; and this was also true when respondents were asked to randomly rate the condition of people from other cultural communities. (See Sandvik et al., 1993; Diener and Lucas, 1999).

Research has also shown that "original emotions" across cultures (i.e., emotions that are unique and have no equivalent in English language), are not experienced more frequently or differently than those that can generally be translated into English (see Scollon et al., 2005).

So there seems to be some basic understanding of what it means to be “happy.”

• POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
• LIFE SATISFACTION

The article defines the concept of life satisfaction, describes approaches to understanding this phenomenon, and identifies factors associated with life satisfaction.

• Models of psychological assistance for schizophrenia, based on the example of domestic and foreign approaches in clinical psychology
• Criticism of cognitive personality styles in the style approach
• Analysis of the relationship between life satisfaction and cognitive style: field dependence/field independence
• Cognitive and behavioral techniques of psychological work

It is difficult to imagine that anyone would consciously want not to receive satisfaction from life. In the history of psychological science, a sufficient number of views on this problem have accumulated in many branches of psychology. Thus, life satisfaction was understood or associated with a number of factors: in a number of psychological and philosophical views as the absence of dissatisfaction and receiving benefits from one’s actions; as a form or one of the types of the final result of satisfying needs or the emergence of meanings in the approaches of humanists and existentialists; as a result of a primary cognitive assessment of what will be the criterion for the state of satisfaction and further comparison of one’s life with it, as satisfying the criteria or not satisfying in cognitive psychology. Also, life satisfaction is associated with the efforts made to achieve set goals, in other words, the stronger the deprivation, the greater the satisfaction from its disappearance in some branches of the behavioral paradigm. There are psychophysiological directions for studying the issue of life satisfaction, linking life satisfaction with the functioning of brain systems and so on.

In positive psychology there is a generalized term that includes the categories of life satisfaction, as a rather vaguely defined concept, this concept is subjective well-being, which is assessed according to two parameters, cognitive and affective. In other words, subjective well-being is a cognitive-affective assessment of the current situation as favorable or unfavorable. The role of cognitive assessment is played by life satisfaction, understood as an assessment of the gap between the existing situation and what seems to be an ideal situation or one that the subject deserves, and the role of affective assessment is played by positive and negative emotions and states associated with everyday experience. Methodologists of this direction on modern stage The approaches of Martin Seligman and Michael Argyle can be considered. They define life satisfaction as a subjective, cognitive and reflective assessment, a judgment about how well things have been and continue to be. The level of life satisfaction depends on a number of life satisfaction factors, but cannot be reduced to their total sum; therefore, the question of integral assessment and impact on life satisfaction remains open. A set of positively and negatively correlated factors with life satisfaction indicates the complexity of its structure.

Positively correlating factors include: the presence of significant social contacts; assessment of the social situation as satisfactory; assessment of health itself as good; state of need significant people; assessment of the financial situation as satisfactory; the opportunity to be creative; satisfaction with the process professional activity; vision of one's own prospects; availability of free time for leisure activities; autonomy as the ability to act in accordance with one's beliefs; personal growth as an opportunity to progress in all areas of life; marriage .

Negatively correlating factors include: the state of poverty and lack of material goods for existence; assessment of health as poor and deteriorating; depression; phobic personality disorders; low self-esteem; high anxiety; low social activity and importance.

Non-influencing factors or factors with extremely low correlation with life satisfaction: Age; floor; education; ethnicity; citizenship and country of residence; religious affiliation; momentary emotions; intelligence quotient; actual wage; profession and position.

Thus, the phenomenon of life satisfaction has a multifactor complex structure of interrelated factors, where satisfaction in one aspect will influence the very method of assessing satisfaction in another, and their combination in a third. Therefore, the most important thing is the assessment or attitude towards the situation, and not its very presence as causing this or that factor.

Bibliography

1. Argyle M. Psychology of happiness. 2nd ed. St. Petersburg: Peter, 2003. – 332 p.
2. Dzhidaryan I.A. Happiness in the ideas of ordinary consciousness. // Psychological journal. – 2000. – vol. 21. No. 2. - With. 40–48.
3. Mardasova T.A. Potential of the concept of dependent personality: issues of modern addictionology / Man in difficult life situation: materials of the All-Russian scientific and practical conference with international participation (Barnaul, November 28, 2014). – Barnaul: Alt.University Publishing House, 2015. – P. 182-186.
4. Mardasova T.A. Specifics of the value-semantic sphere of personality of unmarried women with varying degrees of loneliness / Psychology of personal manifestations in the process of human life / Ed. L.D. Demina, I.A. Ralnikova, D.V. Truevtseva. – Barnaul: Alt Publishing House. Univ., 2009. – 359 p.
5. Seligman Martin E.P. New positive psychology. – M.: Sofia 2006, – 347 p.

Usually, productivity is understood as a certain set of life achievements, successes, and accomplishments of an individual. In scientific and psychological research, it can appear as a variable that is measured on the basis of objective and subjective indicators. From the point of view of measurement reliability, objective indicators are preferable, but psychology and other social and human sciences that study personality as a subject own life, “sufficiently strict criteria have not yet been developed on the basis of which an integrative measurement of the productivity of human life as a whole and its individual stages would become real.” Meanwhile, for psychological analysis, subjective indicators of productivity, which are formed as a result of a person’s self-assessment of individual life activity, are of no less value. internal criteria success or failure. In essence, they are forms of a person’s subjective experience of his own life as successful or unsuccessful, productive or unproductive, realized or unrealized. These experiences unfold in the individual’s self-awareness, and therefore the empirical study of the level of life productivity can be based on methods of formalized and free self-report.

Various subjective indicators have been proposed for analyzing the productivity of individual life activity. In Russian psychology, the causometric psychobiographical approach is popular, within the framework of which productivity is assessed by the degree of saturation of the subjective picture of the life path with significant events of the past, present and future. In foreign psychology, the concept of life satisfaction, developed by E. Diener and his colleagues in line with research into the subjective well-being of an individual, has received wide recognition. In this concept, life satisfaction is considered as a cognitive component of subjective well-being, not mixed with affective components - a maximum of emotionally positive states and a minimum of emotionally negative states. Satisfaction is defined as a global assessment of real life through the prism of subjective standards of a “good life”, which are constructed independently or acquired ready-made from the social environment. The overall level of satisfaction at any given time indicates the degree of discrepancy between the reality of life and personal standards of a “good life.”

The study of the relationship between the meaning of life and the components of subjective well-being of the individual forms one of the main lines in modern existential and positive psychology. A number of foreign and domestic studies have documented a direct correlation between the level of meaningfulness and life satisfaction, which is interpreted as evidence of the need for meaning for the subjective well-being of an individual. The meaning of life is considered in two ways: some researchers see it as an independent phenomenon, acting as an external condition, an exogenous determinant of subjective well-being, while other authors include it in the internal structure of an individual’s psychological well-being as one of the components. In general, this correlation is interpreted as a factual confirmation of V. Frankl’s idea about the primacy of the desire for meaning and the derivation from it of the positive phenomena of human existence - happiness, satisfaction, self-actualization. It should be noted that a similar idea was expressed by Russian existentially thinking philosophers and psychologists, for example, S.L. Rubinstein: “The transformation of a derivative result into a direct immediate goal of action and life, the transformation of life into a pursuit of pleasure, which turns a person away from solving his life problems, is not life, but its perversion, leading to its inevitable devastation.

On the contrary, the less we chase happiness, the more we are busy with the work of our lives, the more positive satisfaction and happiness we find.” The meaning of life is thus seen as important condition, contributing to the achievement of an acceptable level of personal satisfaction with life.

This is a correct, but far from exhaustive explanation of all possible relationships between the meaning of life and life satisfaction. What often escapes the attention of researchers is that the meaning of life is “built-in” inside the psychological mechanism that ensures the formation and maintenance of a sense of satisfaction with life. In the individual consciousness, it is framed in the form of a subjective model of the desired future, or life ideal, and serves as an internal standard with which the individual is compared when assessing his current life. In other words, it performs an evaluative function in relation to the life achievements of the individual. The subjective experience of satisfaction or dissatisfaction is derived from the evaluative function of the meaning of life and, as it were, “sums up” the overall productivity of individual life activity. It signals how the individual is doing with the practical realization of the meaning of life; how much she progresses and succeeds in individual life activities; to what extent has she approached the ideal state, which is “designed” by the meaning of life. It logically follows from this that life satisfaction is a subjective experience of an individual regarding the productivity of individual life activity, assessed through the prism of the meaning of life.

Taking into account the evaluative function helps to understand why meaningfulness and satisfaction are closely related, and at the same time relatively independent phenomena. After all, a meaningful life is not always satisfying, and a satisfying life does not necessarily imply the presence of meaning. The fact is that the presence of meaning in life is important and necessary, but in itself not a sufficient basis for subjective satisfaction with life. A meaningful life becomes satisfying and happy only if a person productively realizes its meaning. If a person is not able to productively realize the existing meaning, it turns from a factor of satisfaction into a source of unhappiness and suffering. The suboptimal meaning of life actually represents the case when meaningfulness of life serves as a prerequisite not for a feeling of deep satisfaction and a stable feeling of happiness, but for uncomfortable, traumatic experiences. In this situation, the presence of meaning in life turns out to be not a benefit, but a psychological burden for the individual. The suboptimal meaning of life burdens life with such contradictions that fetter and inhibit the self-realization of the individual and, therefore, deprive him of the opportunity to enjoy success in life, to feel satisfied with life and with himself.

Thus, subjective experiences of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with life reflect the dynamics practical implementation personality of the meaning of his own life. The degree of satisfaction is determined by how successfully a person progresses in realizing the meaning of his own life and the life goals, plans, and programs derived from it. Various types of suboptimal meaning in life negatively affect the pace and productivity of this advancement, as a result of which the level of life satisfaction falls and the threat of a meaning crisis arises.

The problem of subjective human well-being has deep roots in the history of philosophy, sociology and other sciences. In psychology, this problem has increasingly attracted the attention of researchers in recent decades, which is largely due to the urgent need for psychological practice to determine and understand what serves as the basis for the psychological balance of an individual.

R. M. Shamionov defines subjective well-being as a person’s emotional and evaluative attitude towards his life, his own personality, relationships with other people, as well as processes that are important for him from the point of view of acquired normative, value and semantic ideas about prosperous external and internal environment, expressed in satisfaction with it and the experience of happiness.

Researchers interpret the structure of an individual’s subjective well-being in different ways. E. Diener and R. Bradburn model of psychological well-being, which includes two components: cognitive (intellectual assessment of satisfaction with various areas of one’s life) and emotional (presence of a good or bad mood) [according to: 3, p. 25].

Later, other models of subjective well-being were proposed. Thus, K. Rieff developed a six-component model of psychological well-being. In this model, psychological well-being acts as an integral indicator that combines self-acceptance, positive relationships with others, autonomy, control environment, purpose in life and personal growth. In L.V. Kulikov’s model, subjective well-being is presented as consisting of several interconnected types of well-being - social, spiritual, physical (bodily), material and psychological, each of which has its own structure. N.A. Baturin and co-authors, considering the cognitive-affective theory of social learning by U. Michel, came to the conclusion that it is advisable to use a three-component structure of well-being, including affective, cognitive-affective and cognitive components.

IN Lately More and more researchers are leaning towards a three-component structure of an individual’s psychological well-being, including cognitive, emotional and conative (behavioral) aspects. The cognitive component includes an individual's assessment of his own life and is characterized by the main indicator - life satisfaction. The emotional component of psychological well-being is represented by a positive or negative emotional pole (depending on the experience of events), facilitating or hindering the realization of the goals, needs and intentions of the individual. The conative component is expressed in the relationship of the individual to the surrounding reality through the prism of intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships[from: 7, p. 6].

When considering subjective well-being as a systemic phenomenon, researchers pay special attention to the mechanisms of its formation. E. Diener, for example, believed that the well-being of an individual can only be determined on the basis of internal experience, and external criteria must be considered through the prism of subjectivity, which is directly dependent on the level of well-being. E. Diener clarified N. Bradburn’s theory, according to which a person experiences certain emotions of varying strength throughout life, interacting with each other and developing a certain locus of satisfaction, which influences the perception and assessment of various life circumstances [according to: 8, p. 414].

The mechanism for the formation of well-being described by R. M. Shamionov deserves attention. The author believes that various components of well-being (such as satisfaction with oneself, life, marriage, profession, working conditions, etc.) are not only interconnected, but a number of them are mutually integrated, that is, satisfaction with work contains satisfaction with relationships, etc. Psychological defense mechanisms can perform a regulatory function in relation to various areas of life, compensating for dissatisfaction in any area not only by revaluing it, but also by possibly redirecting activity to areas where the individual experiences satisfaction. The chain-hierarchy of various psychological and socio-psychological components in interrelation and mutual determination with various spheres of satisfaction creates conditions for the emergence of subjective well-being, influencing the personal priorities of the subject.

By satisfaction, R. M. Shamionov understands a complex, dynamic socio-psychological formation based on the integration of cognitive and emotional-volitional processes, characterized by a subjective emotional-evaluative attitude (toward oneself, social relationships, life, work) and having a motivating force that promotes action , search, management of internal and external objects. Guidelines for qualifying the personal level of well-being, according to R. M. Shamionov, lie in the sphere of socialization. An individual’s assessment of the level of his well-being is based on social comparison, during which the subject correlates the results of his activities and external attitudes towards him by comparing himself and his well-being with others, by correlating the well-being of others with his own well-being, or by comparing the level of personal well-being at different time periods with active needs and expresses an emotional-evaluative attitude, which qualifies as a certain level of well-being.

The uniqueness of subjective well-being lies in the fact that the mechanisms of its formation are not only in social environment, but, at the same time, in the inner world of the individual. Subjective well-being acts as a mechanism for regulating the subject’s selective activity in different areas social life and is determined by various factors.

Target of this study: studying the relationship between life satisfaction and gender identity and socio-demographic characteristics of the individual.

Techniques: 1) E. Diener’s Life Satisfaction Scale (SWLS); 2) questionnaire S. Bem. E. Diener's Life Satisfaction Scale has extensive practice. This scale was proposed by E. Diener, R. A. Emmons, R. J. Larsen and S. Griffin in 1985, adapted and validated in Russian by D. A. Leontyev and E. N. Osin in 2003. The validity of this brief screening technique is confirmed by exploratory factor analysis. The life satisfaction scale measures the cognitive assessment of the conformity of life circumstances with the individual's expectations. This indicator shows somewhat weaker relationships with other measures of subjective well-being, however, as one would expect, it will be more closely related to objective indicators of the success of an individual’s life. The scale has fairly high psychometric characteristics and is interconnected with a wide range of indicators of subjective and psychological well-being. Abroad, the methodology is systematically used in cross-national monitoring.

The Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) was proposed by Sandra Bem in 1974 to diagnose psychological sex and determine the degree of androgyny, masculinity and femininity of an individual. The questionnaire can be used in different ways: the subject can fill it out himself to determine psychological gender; also, by changing the instructions, one can study the individual’s susceptibility to stereotypes of masculinity-femininity, and in the form of an expert rating, when the subject is an expert for assessing people well known to him (husband, wife, parents, etc.).

Sample. The respondents were 118 people aged from 26 to 40 years, of which 69 were women and 49 men. Level of education: 81.8% of respondents with higher education, 9.1% with incomplete secondary education, 6.8% with specialized secondary education, 2.3% with an academic degree. 72.9% of respondents rated their level of material well-being (self-esteem) as “average”, 16.9% - “low”, 9.3% - “high”, 0.9% - “very low”.

Research results. A study of life satisfaction using E. Diener’s methodology showed that 12 people (10.2%) were “extremely satisfied” with their lives. The largest number of respondents - 42 people (37.3%) showed the level of “very satisfied” (the result is above average). “More or less satisfied” with their life (average result) - 32 people (27.1%). 25 respondents (21.2%) were “slightly dissatisfied” with their lives. Five people (4.2%) were “dissatisfied” with their lives. The “very dissatisfied” level was not identified in our sample.

Let's present the results comparative analysis life satisfaction in men and women (Fig.). There were no statistically significant differences in life satisfaction between men and women.

Rice. Life satisfaction in men and women

As a result of the study of the characteristics of the respondents’ gender identity using S. Bem’s methodology, it was revealed that 83% of the entire sample of respondents (men and women) belong to the androgynous type of psychological gender. The masculine type was detected in 14% of men and one woman. 17% of women belong to the feminine type. The types of “pronounced masculinity” and “pronounced femininity” were not identified among respondents.

Correlation analysis using the Pearson coefficient did not reveal any connections between life satisfaction and gender identity (androgyny and masculinity) of respondents. Although we note that according to S. Bem, androgyny contributes to the subjective well-being of the individual. At the same time, our study revealed (at the trend level) that women’s femininity increases their life satisfaction (Pearson’s coefficient). This result may indicate that in the modern sociocultural situation, gender identity is not as significant as other factors, in particular socio-demographic factors, influence an individual’s life satisfaction.

Using cross-tabulations compiled in SPSS, we correlated the results on the life satisfaction scale with gender, age, education, marital status, presence of children, and level of material well-being of respondents.

We will describe the “portrait” of a person satisfied with their life based on the results of a sample of 44 respondents (37.3%), 20 men and 24 women, who showed high satisfaction with life (the “very satisfied” level). Satisfied with their life: man (38.8%) or woman (36.2%), aged 29-31 years (45.4%), mostly with higher education (84.1%), registered married (63. 6%) and having 1 child (63.6%), with an average (according to their own assessment) level of material well-being (77.3%). The portrait of a person “dissatisfied” with his life looks different (there are 5 people in our sample): this is a 26- or 39-year-old man with a higher education, unmarried, without children, who assesses his material well-being as low.

One-factor analysis of variance revealed significant differences between subjective satisfaction and self-assessment of the level of material well-being of respondents. The higher respondents (men and women) assess their material well-being, the higher their life satisfaction. This is probably due to the fact that in the modern sociocultural situation, at the age of 26-40, men and women are at the peak of social and economic activity, arranging a comfortable life, and are responsible for the material support of their family.

Thus, the study revealed that life satisfaction, which does not differ statistically significantly between men and women, is not associated with their androgyny and masculinity. At the same time, at the trend level, it was revealed that a woman’s femininity increases her life satisfaction. Data were obtained that in this sample, of the factors taken into account (gender, age, marital status, presence of children, self-assessment of material well-being), self-assessment of material well-being has the greatest influence on the life satisfaction of men and women.

According to the proverb: happiness is short-lived, unhappiness is endless.
There is a “everyday philosophy of useful minimalism”, which calls for living without unnecessary things. Of course, this is also possible if you limit your needs and needs.
Many low-income earners and retirees say, “I’m not poor, I’m a happy poor person.” I try to buy the minimum amount of things I need.”
Of course, poverty is a web from which it is difficult to escape. But absolutely real and possible. The main thing is to gather your will into a fist and act. Don’t sit still, don’t cry, and don’t put up with the sad state of things. Any life changes give at least a chance to end the unenviable social status, in contrast to complete apathy, lack of initiative and passivity.

"Poverty is a characteristic of the economic situation of an individual or social group, in which they cannot satisfy a certain range of minimal needs necessary for life, maintaining working capacity, and procreation. Poverty is a relative concept and depends on the general standard of living in a given society."

Happy poor people are people satisfied with their economic situation.
Contentment is one of the main components of happiness.
Joy is emotional, satisfaction is a figurative representation of happiness and a judgment about how successful everything was and remains.
You can be satisfied with life in general or with some specific areas, for example, health, work, family and home life, monetary allowance and prices, social relations, social values ​​and norms, living conditions.
An individual's life satisfaction is often determined by his way of thinking and is driven by comparisons with the past or with other people.
People who are satisfied with life also exist among those who are classified in the lower income bracket, these are the “happy poor”. They adapted to their plight and got used to defenselessness, because for a long time they felt their inability to change the situation.
Let's consider how satisfaction is determined internal factors person as a way of thinking. Sometimes, assessments of satisfaction are driven by comparisons with the past or with other people. In addition, judgment is influenced directly emotional condition, as well as a simple habit - adaptation to circumstances and different visions of events. Contentment is an illusion that occurs when people deceive themselves into thinking that they are completely satisfied with their lives. Or does satisfaction depend on the goals a person sets for himself? The very presence of a goal can be its source. At the same time, failure to achieve a goal turns out to be a cause of dissatisfaction. Some phenomena of dissatisfaction can be considered both as errors of judgment (which should be avoided) and as sources of inauthentic judgments of satisfaction.
But satisfaction can be increased not only by changing the actual situation, but also by changing a negative view to a positive one (for example, during psychological consultation, psychotherapy).
One fairy tale says: “Once upon a time there lived a poor man. He never complained about anyone, he pleased everyone, he didn’t hide lies. But no matter how hard he worked, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get out of poverty. He had many children, but he had a wife. kind and hardworking..
The poor man sang songs with his children while working in the evenings, and those songs flowed like a river throughout the house. People were happy about the songs.
It turns out that for a poor person, social relationships and friendships strongly influence happiness and other aspects of well-being. It is possible that they are the single most important source of happiness. The joy of social relationships and friendly communication is due to the pleasant activities that friends and acquaintances do when they meet, spending leisure time together. Usually, it is in a friendly company that people dance, play, communicate confidentially and walk. Such a pastime seems ordinary, but it brings special joy, being a factor of mutual support.
The essence of social events that cause joy is the perception of nonverbal cues, especially smiles and friendly tones.
The positive role of friendly communication manifests itself in different ways. Adults in close relationships have been found to be more concerned with the needs of others than with their own welfare—a behavior that has been termed “communal” relationships. Altruism and helping people in need are a source of positive emotions. Sociability presupposes cooperation, that is, taking into account the interests of other people as one’s own. Extroverts are more likely to have this trait than introverts. But both altruism and charity have some costs: a person may develop anxiety and dependence, burden and disappointment.
Social interaction with women gives great pleasure to both halves of humanity. The best way to judge how lonely a person is is by how often he communicates with women; time spent with men does not play a role (Wheeler et al., 1983).

Material https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty
Poverty is a consequence of diverse and interrelated causes, which are grouped into the following groups:
economic (unemployment, social inequality, including low wages, low labor productivity, uncompetitiveness of the industry),
social and medical (disability, old age, high level morbidity),
demographic (single-parent families, a large number of dependents in the family, overpopulation),
educational qualifications (low level of education, insufficient professional training),
political (military conflicts, forced migration),
regional-geographical (uneven development of regions).
religious, philosophical and psychological (asceticism as a way of life, foolishness)
According to experts from the international humanitarian organization Oxfam, the reasons for the increase in poverty and social inequality in the world since 2010 are the following:
tax evasion by wealthy people
reduction in workers' wages,
increasing the difference between the minimum and maximum wage levels.

In world practice, there are three main concepts for defining poverty:
Absolute
The concept of absolute poverty is closely related to the concept of poverty line. The poverty threshold (poverty line) is the level of disposable income gross income or consumption below which a person is considered poor. Absolute poverty is often measured as the number of people or households whose level of consumption or income is below the poverty line.
If we take the poverty line as the necessary means to support life, then we can define all funds above this line as discretionary income. Sometimes several poverty lines are used: for poverty itself and for extreme poverty.
The World Bank sets the absolute poverty threshold for living on less than 1.25 US dollars a day (the rate is calculated using PPP). In 2015, the World Bank increased the poverty line to 1.9 dollars a day.
The poverty line as an indicator has one significant drawback: it does not take into account the number of households located directly above it by a small margin. It should also be noted that this allows a situation to exist where poverty and inequality are increasing and the number of people below the poverty line is decreasing.
Relative
Relative poverty is contrasted with absolute poverty. Measures of relative poverty set a relative poverty line and measure the income of the population against it. In the case when the real incomes of the entire population grow, but their distribution does not change, relative poverty remains the same. Thus, the concept of relative poverty is part of the concept of inequality. However, this does not mean that less equality always means less relative poverty, or vice versa.
A measure of relative poverty might show, for example, how many people earn less than a quarter of the median income. This approach is especially useful when identifying poverty in unfamiliar societies or where it is difficult to value a particular set of goods. Comparing income with the mode share and the harmonic mean are additional tools for studying the stratification of society.
The founder of the relative concept of poverty is (Robert M.?) P. Townsend, who viewed poverty as a condition in which, due to lack of economic resources maintaining the usual way of life for the majority of members of a given society becomes impossible. He based his analysis of poverty on the concept of a set of experienced deprivations, multidimensional deprivation, which he understood as “a state of observable and demonstrable disadvantage of an individual, family or group relative to the community, society or nation as a whole.”
The concept of multidimensional deprivation was introduced by P. Townsend because, along with material deprivation, including such indicators as food, clothing, housing conditions, durable goods, place and condition of the living environment, conditions and nature of work, he also used indicators of social deprivation, including nature of employment, features of leisure time, education, etc.
Currently within this definition There are two directions of poverty.
The first focuses on livelihoods, the ability to purchase goods needed to meet basic needs. IN in this case When constructing the relative poverty line, the indicator of median personal disposable income is used. In the USA, the relative poverty line corresponds to 40% of median income, in most European countries - 50%, in Scandinavia - 60%.
Within the second direction, called the civil law theory of poverty, poverty is measured through deprivation in the broad sense of the word. In this case, it is considered whether the means available allow full participation in society, based on certain basic sets of deprivations taken into account.
The scale of relative poverty does not coincide with the scale of absolute poverty. Absolute poverty can be eliminated, but relative poverty always persists, due to the fact that inequality is an indispensable attribute of stratified societies. Relative poverty persists and even increases as living standards for all social classes rise.
Subjective poverty is a concept of poverty based on the belief that only an individual can determine whether he or she is poor. There are many approaches to determining the level of subjective poverty: you can find out how many people consider themselves poor or consider their friends poor. It is possible to identify a subjective absolute poverty line based on public opinion, and then compare the income of the population with it.