Predictors of African American Well-Being

This study examines panel data from the National Survey of Black Americans with regard to the predictors of African American quality of life between 1980 and 1992. Objective measures (such as health, education, and income) indicate that the situation for African Americans has either stagnated or declined during this period. Regression analyses found: (a) measures of general life satisfaction, happiness, and family satisfaction to be interrelated across time; (b) global well-being measures of general life satisfaction and happiness to be the strongest predictors of each other; and (c) variation in general life satisfaction to be consistently accounted for by domain well-being measures of family satisfaction and health satisfaction. Implications for further research are discussed.