Comparing quality of life among older adults with relative low-income status across different welfare regimes in Europe

This study examines the impact of relative low-income status on the quality of life (QoL) of older adults across four European welfare regimes: social-democratic, liberal, conservative, and Mediterranean. Drawing on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) (N = 120,577), we employ survey-weighted OLS models to examine how welfare regimes moderate the relationship between relative low-income status and QoL among older adults aged 60 and over. Findings reveal that relative low-income status consistently undermines QoL across all regimes, but the magnitude of this association varies significantly by regime type. Social-democratic and liberal regimes offer a significantly more protective context, with a smaller QoL gap between older adults with and without relative low-income status. By contrast, this gap remained large and did not differ significantly between the conservative and Mediterranean regimes, indicating that older adults with relative low-income status in these two regimes face a comparably steep disadvantage. Heterogeneity analyses further show that the liberal regime (the UK) provides targeted protection for older adults with chronic conditions, likely due to universal healthcare access. The study concludes that older adults’ QoL depends not only on individual resources but fundamentally on the structural and social policy design of their welfare systems.