Rusinova N.L., Safronov V.V. Values, culture and health differences: Overview of Western research. St. Petersburg sociology today, 2020, No. 13-14, pp. 108-131.

Abstract

This article provides an overview of contemporary Western research on the impact of values and culture on people's subjective wellbeing and health. An analysis of the state of art indicates the emergence of an important research area on subjective well-being and inequalities in health, in which they are explained by the peculiarities of people's value orientations and cultural preferences. Generalization of the scientific facts revealed in this research area is hampered by the ambiguous results obtained in the still few studies, carried out on diverse and specific samples, using various constructs and tools for fixing dependent and independent variables, as well as by the contradictoriness of empirical conclusions or their inconsistency with theoretical expectations. To overcome ambiguity, researchers turn to comparative multilevel modeling, which analyzes the contextual socio-economic and cultural moderation of the individual level relationships between values, subjective well-being, emotional distress and health related behaviors.