Constraints, recent change, objective and subjective well-being: Urban, rural-nonfarm, and rural-farm households in Poland

This study is in response to the findings of Winter et al. (1999) that in 1994 Poland, compared to urban households, rural households experienced worse domain living conditions yet rated their household situation as better. Using the same data, which were collected in the province of Lublin in Poland from primarily female respondents, 592 households are analyzed.;The relationship between socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the household (constraints), recent change in the household's situation, conditions (objective well-being), and satisfaction (subjective well-being) is assessed globally and within five specific domains: health, housing, household equipment, food, and transportation. Parallel ordinary least squares regression analyses are performed and total effects are decomposed for urban and rural residents, and further, for rural-nonfarm and rural-farm households. The means of the exogenous and endogenous variables are compared for urban, rural-nonfarm and rural-farm households.;The results of the comparison-of-means procedures indicate that respondents in urban areas tend to have the highest levels of education, and urban households are apt to have the best conditions. Respondents from rural-nonfarm households tend to be the oldest, and rural-farm households are likely to have the most household members, children, and workers.;The findings of the regression analyses and the decomposition of total effects indicate that, of the household characteristics entered into the analyses, age of the respondent, education of the respondent, and total household income are the most consistent predictors of conditions, and of satisfaction, indirectly through their influence on conditions.;As expected, constraints and recent change affect objective well-being, and constraints, recent change, and objective well-being affect subjective well-being. A finding that was not expected, however, is that recent change, rather than objective well-being, is a more consistent and a stronger predictor of subjective well-being. It is possible that the measures of recent change and conditions are entered into the model in reverse order; rather than reported recent change leading to conditions, it is the perception of recent change that is influenced by current conditions, which, in turn, affects satisfaction. It also is likely that recent change and conditions influence one another, and it is this relationship that affects satisfaction.