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Subjective Well-Being in 4 Former Socialist Republics of Yugoslavia – A Cross-National Comparison Between Rural and Urban Areas

The importance to measure subjective aspects of wellbeing in a more accurate assessment of the quality of life has been increasingly recognized in theory and empirical studies. In this paper, we analyze and compare subjective wellbeing (SWB) in rural and urban areas of four countries from the post-Yugoslav space, which were included in Round 9 (2018) of the European Social Survey (ESS), two members of the European Union (EU), Croatia and Slovenia, and two non-EU countries, Montenegro and Serbia. We have constructed the Subjective Wellbeing Index (SWI) based on available ESS items, as a more concise version of VanderWeele’s Flourishing Index (2017). Our SWI consists of three domains: (1) happiness and life satisfaction, (2) mental and physical health, and (3) financial and material stability. Results indicate that, regardless of the settlement type, the respondents from two EU countries have a higher perceived SWI than those from two non-EU countries. Rural-urban differences were found in all four countries, with urban respondents scoring significantly higher on the SWI than their rural counterparts. This research fills the gap in SWB literature in these countries and their rural and urban areas, as well as offers a new comparative insight between them.

subjective wellbeing, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, rural-urban comparison, European Social Survey

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