This paper provides new insights into the association between economic

standing and subjective well-being (SWB) among aging individuals in three

industrialized countries: Germany, Israel, and Sweden. Specifically, we
compare the effects of wealth, in line with the growing consensus that wealth
is an important determinant of economic standing alongside income, on SWB
across three welfare-state regimes: conservative (Germany), liberal (Israel),
and social-democratic (Sweden). Drawing on needs theory, we hypothesize
that individuals of poor wealth would report lower levels of SWB in all
countries. We expect, however, the association between poor wealth and SWB
to be stronger in the liberal system (Israel) and weaker in the conservative
system (Germany) with the weakest effect found in the social-democratic
system (Sweden) due to differences in the extent of social benefits each
welfare-state regime provides its residents. To test our hypotheses, we utilize
data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE1).
Results indicate that income and wealth explain a greater part of the variance
in SWB when taken together. We find a ‘poor penalty’ on SWB in Germany
and Israel while in Sweden wealth has no impact on SWB. Finally, when
controlling for subjective economic hardship (needs), the negative effect of
poor wealth on SWB disappears in Germany, but maintains significance in
Israel, suggesting that needs theory alone cannot explain the poor penalty in
Israel. In conclusion, our findings suggest that the welfare-state has an impact
on the wealth–SWB relation and that the mechanisms that underlie this
relation operate differently in Germany and Israel.