Hope agency and hope pathways: exploring the relationships between social class and subjective wellbeing in different age groups

This study investigates the mediating effects of hope agency and hope pathways in the relationships between objective and subjective social class and subjective wellbeing among Chinese adults of different ages. We drew a sample of 3,390 individuals from the 2017 China General Social Survey using a multistage stratified sampling design, comprising 1,316 young adults, 1,015 middle-aged adults, and 1,059 older adults. The Mac Arthur Scale of Social Class, the combination measurement of indicators (income, educational level, and occupational category), the Subjective Wellbeing Scale for Chinese Citizens, and the State Hope Scale are employed to measure respondents’ subjective and objective social class, subjective wellbeing, hope agency, and hope pathways, respectively. The findings indicate that both objective and subjective social class have significant positive effects on the subjective wellbeing of young adults to the same extent. However, subjective social class exhibits a more pronounced and significant positive effect on the subjective wellbeing of middle-aged and older adults than objective social class. Furthermore, this study found that hope agency and hope pathways significantly mediate the relationships between objective and subjective social class and subjective wellbeing in young and middle-aged adults, whereas only hope pathways mediate these relationships in older adults. These findings highlight the age variations in the links between objective and subjective social class, hope agency, hope pathways, and subjective wellbeing, and provide several important practical implications for enhancing the subjective wellbeing of the Chinese population.