Standing together: is family a resilience factor for subjective wellbeing?

The chapter investigates the relation between individual wellbeing and social support in the form of family ties. The contribution is twofold: on one side it aims at disentangling the effect of different family structures on different wellbeing domains; on the other, it attempts to investigate the role of family as buffer for subjective wellbeing’ shocks. The work uses the recent economic crisis as an external source of individual stress to challenge the protective role of family. The empirical application relies on a pooled cross section coming from the national survey “Aspect of daily life†over the time period 2010-2015 and assess the impact of different family types on life satisfaction and satisfaction with life domains. Results confirm the protective role of family ties against drop in subjective wellbeing. Precisely, couples display a consistent higher probability of being satisfied with life as a whole, with economic resources, health, family and friends relations, whereas singles display higher probability of being satisfied with leisure time and their work. Moreover, during the crisis, couples report a 24 per cent higher probability to be satisfied with their life.