Abstract
Most studies investigating the emerging adults’ (objective and subjective) financial well-being specifically focused on the main predictors of this construct, whereas only few studies tested the financial well-being as antecedent of possible outcomes during emerging adulthood. The current paper aims (1) to test the impact that the emerging adults’ subjective financial well-being (i.e., subjective perception of the own financial condition) has on their subjective and psychological well-being and (2) to verify if this relation is moderated by emerging adults’ individual differences respect to the way in which they can tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity. On a sample of 452 Italian and Portuguese participants (20–27 years old) a cluster analysis was performed in order to identify groups of emerging adults with similar patterns of uncertainty and ambiguity tolerance. We identified four groups: anxiety about ambiguity and uncertainty, comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty, black-and-white thinking, flexible thinking. Then, a multi-group path analysis was carried out in order to test if the relationships between the subjective financial well-being and the subjective and psychological well-being were invariant across groups. We found that the subjective financial well-being has a positive and invariant impact on the subjective well-being, whereas it has a positive but non-invariant impact on the psychological well-being. Implications of the results are discussed.
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Notes
Actually, for the Subjective Well-being Scale, the metric invariance assumption was fully met except for the “I feel negative most of the time” item that, in the “Flexible thinking” group, had a factor loading on the “negative feelings” factor significantly lower than in the other three groups. The constraint that fixed this factor loading as equal between the other three groups was maintained.
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Iannello, P., Sorgente, A., Lanz, M. et al. Financial Well-Being and Its Relationship with Subjective and Psychological Well-Being Among Emerging Adults: Testing the Moderating Effect of Individual Differences. J Happiness Stud 22, 1385–1411 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-020-00277-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-020-00277-x