Income and education show distinct links to health and happiness in daily life

With growing levels of inequality, understanding relationships between socioeconomic status (SES), health and well-being is as important as ever. Many studies focus on associations between an SES composite and either health ‘or’ happiness; here we examine unique relationships between SES indicators (income and education) and health ‘and’ well-being outcomes at both individual and community levels, drawing on a sample of adults (N = 71,385; M_age = 40.62, s.d. = 13.20) from more than 10 countries and representing 13,089 unique ZIP codes within the United States. A subset (N = 29,567) participated in an Ecological Momentary Assessment study by providing daily reports of their emotions, blood pressure and heart rate (N_obs = 329,543) for 3 weeks. Generally, higher levels of education were more consistently linked to indicators of better health, whereas higher levels of income were associated with higher levels of well-being. Individual-level SES predicted health and well-being more strongly than community-level factors.