The literature on SWB in Brazil has mostly examined the correlates associated with the high levels of Brazilian SWB (e.g. Islam et al., 2009; Gori-Mora, 2013; Golgher & Coutinho, 2020) in comparison with those of many other countries. Some Brazilian studies have focused on the SWB of specific populations such as the elderly (e.g., Pinto et al., 2016; Simões et al., 2021) and adolescents (e.g., Viñas et al., 2019) or are specific quasi-experiments focusing on rural household displacement (Randell, 2016) or land ownership programs (De Moura & De Silveira Bueno, 2013).

Our paper contributes to this literature in several ways. First, using data from the Gallup World Poll for the decade starting in 2010, we identify the factors associated with Brazil’s SWB and its change during this period, paying special attention to differences across groups within the country. The results suggest that having sufficient income, financial security, economic optimism, satisfaction with living standards and health services, social capital, tertiary education, and digital access are the main factors associated with SWB in Brazil. In line with the high SWB inequality, there are substantial differences in SWB along the income distribution, across generations and space, and across groups with different employment and education status. There are also differences in the extent to which the factors underpinning SWB matter for different population groups. Youth derive greater life satisfaction from economic optimism, digital access, and acceptance of diversity than older generations. Satisfaction with living standards, economic optimism, and tertiary education matter more for the poor, while opportunities for social mobility are more important to the happiness of the middle and upper classes. Episodes of financial struggle, confidence in national institutions, and the quality of education services have a stronger influence on the SWB of urban residents compared to rural populations. In the higher-income South and Southeast, people care more about their health, ability to obtain tertiary education, and social relations, while in the rest of the country people are more concerned about their ability to earn income and standard of living.

Second, we explore the decline in SWB since 2015 and analyze _which groups_ have been affected the most and _how_ . The decline in SWB coincided with a remarkable economic deterioration but declining income and increasing unemployment are not the only factors associated with the deterioration in perceived welfare. Deteriorating economic expectations and political disappointment also played a role in this decline both because the share of people who became more pessimistic about the economic outlook increased and because economic expectations assumed a greater role in people’s preferences, especially those of men. We show that not everyone’s SWB was equally hit by the crisis and that the factors associated with the SWB decline vary across groups.<sup>7</sup> A rise in dissatisfaction with living standards mattered more for men than women and those older than 30 than the young, while economic pessimism mattered more to the less educated and the old. Disappointment with political leadership was more important for the youth than Brazilians older than 30. The experienced welfare of the bottom 40% of the population was affected both by the economic deterioration and the growing leadership crisis.

Third, we provide support for the hypothesis that the decline in SWB in the 2010s could be indicative of increased polarization and decline in support for Brazil’s social contract.<sup>8</sup> Building on the literature that has examined the relationship between SWB, social unrest (e.g., Arampatzi et al., 2018; Witte et al., 2020; Abi-Nasif et al., 2021), and voting behavior (e.g. Liberini et al., 2017; Ward et al., 2021) and using a nationally representative survey, collected for the Brazilian Electoral Study (Meneguello, 2019), we show that the decline in SWB and the switch in voter support in the 2018 general elections from one end of the political spectrum to the other were both associated with

> 7 A recent paper also provides evidence of considerable differences in preferences over policy areas across space and demographic groups in Colombia (Burger et al. 2021).

> 8 Here we define a social contract as ‘ _the entirety of explicit or implicit agreements between all relevant societal groups and the sovereign (i.e., the government or any other actor in power), defining their rights and obligations toward each other’_ (Loewe et al., 2021).

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