Income satisfaction is less predictive of life satisfaction in individuals who believe their lives have meaning or purpose: A 94-nation study

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Highlights

  • Religiosity was not a moderator of the relationship between income satisfaction and life satisfaction.

  • Purpose in life was a significant moderator of this relationship.

  • The relationship was weaker among people with a purpose in life.

  • So purpose in life mitigates the negative relationship between the two variables.

Abstract

Using a sample of 97,739 individuals across 94 countries, this study sought to examine whether religiosity and purpose in life moderate the relationship between income satisfaction and life satisfaction. The results of multilevel modeling showed that whereas religiosity was not a significant moderator of this relationship, purpose significantly moderated the relationship between income satisfaction and life satisfaction. The positive relationship between the two variables was weaker among people with a purpose in life than those without it. People who believe their lives have meaning or purpose are likely to deemphasize the role of materialistic aspirations, focus more on intrinsic pursuits, and have more mental resources to cope with financial challenges.

Introduction

Income is an important predictor of subjective well-being (SWB; Frank, 2012). For example, Diego-Rosell, Tortora, and Bird (2018) found that among a wide range of psychological, social, and demographic predictors, satisfaction with household income and standards of living was the most important predictor of life satisfaction (LS) around the globe. Research has identified many moderators of the relationship between income and SWB. For example, the effects of income on SWB partly depend on how individuals think their income compares with that of other individuals (Clark, Frijters, & Shields, 2008). Another moderator is how the income is spent. Spending money on the satisfaction of important needs results in higher levels of subjective well-being than spending it on prestige-related purchases (Tay, Zyphur, & Batz, 2018). Research has also found a negative relationship between materialism and SWB (Dittmar, Bond, Hurst, & Kasser, 2014), which suggests that personal values also matter. Therefore, many factors, such as comparison standards, spending habits, and values need to be taken into account in order to fully understand the relationship between income and SWB.

The present study suggests two moderators for the relationship between household income satisfaction (HHIS) and LS: religiosity and purpose in life. Religions tend to deemphasize the role of wealth and denounce materialism. They instead emphasize nonmaterialistic values such as tradition, conformity, and transcendence. Empirical evidence shows that religious (vs nonreligious) individuals attach more importance to nonmaterialistic values (Saroglou, Delpierre, & Dernelle, 2004). Therefore, it was expected that the relationship between income satisfaction and well-being would be weaker in religious individuals than in non-religious individuals. Likewise, people who have a sense of meaning and purpose in life are less likely to overemphasize external resources such as income when evaluating their lives. A lack of purpose in life is linked with extrinsic motivation (Kasser, Ryan, Zax, & Sameroff, 1995), which involves prioritizing materialistic pursuits over more intrinsic pursuits. The ability to harvest meaning from life and attain a sense of significance may also function as a buffer against financial challenges (Ryff, 2014). Therefore, purpose was expected to mitigate the relationship between income and LS.

In sum, both religiosity and purpose may come to reduce the subjective importance of wealth as a basis for life satisfaction and self-worth judgments. The two variables may also facilitate effective coping with financial hardship. Thus, they were expected to reduce the impact of income satisfaction on LS. The present study used a large sample of individuals across 94 countries to test this prediction. Age, gender, and the national levels of religiosity and purpose were controlled in the analyses.

Section snippets

Participants

The data were extracted from the Gallup World Poll (GWP) dataset. Using randomly selected and nationally representative samples, GWP continually surveys residents in a large number of countries which represent >95% of the world's adult population. The GWP has been translated into various languages using the method of back-translation. Because the purpose in life item has only been used in a small number of countries (or not used at all) in other years, the present study used data collected

Results

First, a multi-level model without predictors (the null model) was tested. The random effects from the null model are reported in Table 2. As shown, there is significant variability both at the individual (residual) and national (intercept) levels in the LS scores. In the main model of the study, all of the predictors of the study were included along with the two interaction terms of HHIS×purpose and HHIS×religiosity to explain the variation in LS scores at the two levels. The resulting random

Discussion

After controlling for demographic factors and national levels of the variables, the results showed that the relationship between HHIS and LS was moderated by purpose. More specifically, HHIS had a weaker association with LS in people who had a sense of purpose in life than those who lacked it. This buffering effect may be explained in at least two ways. Firstly, people who believe their lives have meaning or purpose may deemphasize financial aspirations and instead focus on more intrinsic

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017S1A3A2066611).

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