Capital region residence and life satisfaction: age and social status heterogeneity

South Korea is experiencing a distinctive convergence of rapid population aging and extreme spatial concentration in its capital region, the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA). Within this highly centralized spatial structure, discussions of life satisfaction have largely relied on average comparisons, implicitly treating capital region residents as a homogeneous population. As a result, relatively little is known about how life satisfaction within the capital region varies across and within age groups, depending on individuals’ socioeconomic resources and perceived social status. This study investigates how the association between SMA residence and life satisfaction varies across age groups and by individuals’ objective socioeconomic status (SES) and subjective social status (SSS). Using nationally representative data from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS), we estimate interaction models to assess how age, SES, and SSS jointly condition the association between SMA residence and life satisfaction. The results reveal three key findings. First, SMA residence is associated with lower life satisfaction relative to non-SMA regions, and this negative association becomes stronger with age. Second, objective SES significantly moderates this relationship for middle-aged and older adults but not for younger adults. Third, SSS emerges as a robust moderator across all age groups, highlighting the importance of psychosocial mechanisms such as social comparison in highly competitive capital region contexts. Taken together, these findings indicate that life satisfaction within the capital region is highly stratified, with mechanisms buffering residential disadvantages differing across population subgroups. This underscores the need for age-sensitive and stratification-aware approaches to spatial inequality in rapidly aging societies.