Bien estar y calidad de vida en la población jubilada residente en la ciudad de LisboaBem-estar e qualidade de vida da populaçao reformada residente na cidade de Lisboa

Abstract

Our study was a comparative study with the purpose of analysing the impact of the participation in an activity, marital status, pathology and school level of retired and pre-retired individuals living in the city of Lisbon, on Subjective Well-Being (SWB) and on Quality of Life (QoL). The sample was composed by 732 individuals aged between 50 and 93, 60,7% females and 39,3% males, of which 57,9% were married, 24,6% were widowed, 9,0% were divorced and 8,5% were single and 56,0% stated having no pathology and 44,0% with pathology and school level between illiterate (6,6%) and College or University degree (22,3%). We compared SWB and QoL means for different variables and determined typical profiles of our subjects. The instruments we used were: a Social-Demographic Questionnaire specially designed for this study, the W-BQ 22, in the portuguese version, by Guerra e Ribeiro, 2001 and, the MOS SF-36, in the portuguese version 2.0, by Ferreira, 2003, to evaluate QoL. Results: The participation in an Activity and the Schooling Level influence positively both SWB (70,07 versus 61,51) and (42,37 to 76,23) and, QoL (67,50 versus 56,71) and (41,20 to 71,71), respectively and we verified the irrelevance of the type of Activity. Both SWB and QoL decrease sequentially from Divorced/Separated (69,21 and 67,57), Married/Living Together (68,46 and 65,33), Single (62,36 and 59,40) to Widowed (60,32 and 54,58). In what concerns the existence/non existence of pathology we found that those with pathology have a significantly lower SWB and QoL indexes then those without it (59,77 versus 70,62 and 52,83 versus 69,69) and that the type of pathology is irrelevant. We concluded for the non existence of association between independent variables and that those which contribute the most for the SWB's and QoL-s variability are pathology and schooling level (7,9% and 22,3% for SWB and 16,3% and 14,9% for QoL respectively). We also defined a comprehensive profile for retired individuals with both SWB and QoL above their respective index statistical means: Individuals aged between 61 and 70, mainly males, divorced/separated, without pathology, with a school level from 10th grade to a College/University degree, participating regularly in an activity.