Housing and Life Satisfaction of Older Adults in Two Rural Regions in Germany

The first objective of this work is to contrast objective and subjective indicators of older adults' housing situations in western and eastern German rural regions. The second objective of this study is to examine the role of housing-related variables to predict life satisfaction by simultaneously controlling for other generally acknowledged predictors. The data were gathered in two rural regions in western and eastern Germany by drawing a sample of N = 412 older adults (55-99 years old; M = 73.2 years) stratified by age and gender. All participants lived in private households. As suggested by the paradox of actual versus perceived life conditions, analysis revealed comparable levels of perceived life satisfaction in spite of significantly different objective and subjective housing-related variables to the advantage of the western region. Moreover, the central hypothesis of this work that housing-related variables explain a substantial portion of variance in life satisfaction was supported by the data.