Determinants of Life Satisfaction and Self-Perceived Health in Nationally Representative Population-Based Samples, Canada, 2009 to 2018

We aim to 1) examine changes in the relationship between self-perceived health and life satisfaction; 2) explore potential attributable factors associated with life satisfaction and self-perceived health, and 3) investigate the role of social support in these relationships. Data analyzed were from ten national Canadian Community Health Surveys from 2009 to 2018. We found that self-perceived health and life satisfaction were positively and significantly correlated with each other, and their correlation increased over time. However, life satisfaction and self-perceived health were correlated with different sets of socio-demographic characteristics. The relationship between self-perceived health and life satisfaction varied across different levels of social support, and an additive interaction between social support and self-perceived health was observed in life satisfaction. The combined effect of both self-perceived health as 'good' and high social support on life satisfaction was approximately two to four times higher than what was expected from the sum of the effects of social support and self-perceived health alone. The study findings suggest targeting health promotions for population well-being should focus on identified characteristics and pay particular attention to the additive effect of self-perceived health and social support.