Abstract
This paper uses a variety of individual-level survey data from several countries to test for interactions between subjective well-being at different ages and variables measuring the nature and quality of the social context at work, at home, and in the community. While earlier studies have found important age patterns (often U-shaped) and social context effects, these two sets of variables have generally been treated as mutually independent. We test for and find several large and highly significant interactions. Results are presented for life evaluations and (in some surveys) for happiness yesterday, in models with and without other control variables. The U-shape in age is found to be significantly flatter, and well-being in the middle of the age range higher, for those who are in workplaces with partner-like superiors, for those living as couples, and for those who have lived for longer in their communities. A strong sense of community belonging is associated with greater life satisfaction at all ages, but especially so at ages 60 and above, in some samples deepening the U-shape in age by increasing the size of the life satisfaction gains following the mid-life low.
An earlier version of this chapter appeared as NBER Working Paper 25121, October 2018.
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Notes
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For example, Steptoe et al. (2015, Figures 18.1 to 18.4) show self reports of experienced pain to become steadily more frequent as age increases in all four major groups of countries reviewed.
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See Weiss et al. (2015).
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See Easterlin (2006).
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For example, Schwandt (2016), using German panel data, argues that the U-shape is more prevalent among those respondents with unmet expectations for the evolution of their happiness.
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We find evidence for this from a sample combining several waves of life satisfaction data from the Canadian General Social Survey. Regressions of individual SWL on work/life balance, marital status and length of tenure in one’s neighbourhood, done separately for the population divided into three age groups, show that the impact of the self-assessed quality of work/life balance is ten times greater for those in the 45–54 age group than for older workers. It is 50% greater than for younger workers. By way of comparison, the coefficients for marital status and length of tenure in the neighbourhood are the same for middle-aged and older workers, while being less for younger workers.
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Xing and Huang (2014) also find U-shapes that vary for different measures of subjective well-being, in their case based on Chinese data.
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Stone et al. (2010), using an earlier and smaller sample of data from the same Gallup Daily Poll, also show a later trough for positive affect than for the ladder, in their case looking at the whole population.
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The data and procedures are explained more fully in Helliwell and Wang (2015).
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We exclude the larger samples from Russia, Germany and the United Kingdom (roughly 2000, 9000 and 10,000, respectively) because they are sufficient for separate analysis and are large enough to affect the overall findings from a pooled sample.
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See Grover and Helliwell (2017).
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See Grover and Helliwell (2017).
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See Bonke et al. (2017, Figures 18.9 and 18.10).
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This is consistent with Van Willigen’s (2000) longitudinal analysis showing that the life satisfactions gains from volunteering were larger for elderly than for middle-aged subjects.
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As emphasized by Graham and Pozuelo (2017).
- 22.
This is also the focus of Piper (2015) using UK data.
- 23.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Gallup Organization and Statistics Canada for access to data, and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research for research support. Wang is grateful to the KDI School of Public Policy and Management for financial support. We acknowledge helpful comments from readers and conference participants, especially Andrew Oswald and Arthur Stone.
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Helliwell, J.F., Huang, H., Norton, M.B., Wang, S. (2019). Happiness at Different Ages: The Social Context Matters. In: Rojas, M. (eds) The Economics of Happiness. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15835-4_20
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