A Research Synthesis of Gender and Social Class as Correlates of Subjective Well-Being

Meta-analytic techniques were used to synthesize findings from the extant empirical literature on gender and social class as predictors of subjective well-being among U.S. adults. Based upon Rubin's (1979) research, we tested a family of hypotheses that gender, relative to social class, accounted for more variation in subjective well-being. Examination of zero-order and first-order effect sizes revealed that men have slightly higher subjective well-being than women and that, while gender is a statistically significant predictor of subjective well-being, it accounts for little variance. Three measures of social class, composite socioeconomic status, occupational status, and income also are significantly related to subjective well-being on the zero-order level; but that relation is reduced when gender is used as a covariate. Overall, across the studies we synthesized, gender does not transcend social class as a major determinant of subjective well-being.