Is well-being U-shaped over the life cycle?

By David G. Blanchflower, Andrew J. Oswald. Social Science & Medicine (1967), 2008

1,568 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present evidence that psychological well-being is U-shaped through life. A difficulty with research on this issue is that there are likely to be omitted cohort effects (earlier generations may have been born in, say, particularly good or bad times). First, using data on 500,000 randomly sampled Americans and West Europeans, the paper designs a test that can control for cohort effects. Holding other factors constant, we show that a typical individual's happiness reaches its minimum - on both sides of the Atlantic and for both males and females - in middle age. Second, evidence is provided for the existence of a similar U-shape through the life-course in East European, Latin American and Asian nations. Third, a U-shape in age is found in separate well-being regression equations in 72 developed and developing nations. Fourth, using measures that are closer to psychiatric scores, we document a comparable well-being curve across the life cycle in 2 other data sets (1) in GHQ-N6 mental health levels among a sample of 16,000 Europeans, and (2) in reported depression-and-anxiety levels among 1 million UK citizens. Fifth, we discuss some apparent exceptions, particularly in developing nations, to the U-shape. Sixth, we note that American male birth-cohorts seem to have become progressively less content with their lives. Our results are based on regression equations in which other influences, such as demographic variables and income, are held constant.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Health, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/07c02e1e643cd1bfe44c6cee5403fb1c2434f993

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Citations in the corpus

The Role of Domain Satisfaction in Explaining the Paradoxical Association Between Life Satisfaction and Age (2011, neutral): “For instance, Blanchflower and Oswald (2008) used cross-sectional data from multiple nations to demonstrate that life satisfaction follows a curvilinear pattern that reaches its lowest point at middle age but then increases into later adulthood.”
Well-being is more than happiness and life satisfaction: a multidimensional analysis of 21 countries (2020, neutral): “A key example of this is the absence in our data of a U-shaped curve for age, which is commonly found in studies using life satisfaction or happiness [5].”
Assessing the Relationship Between Human Well-being and Ecosystem Services: A Review of Frameworks (2014, neutral): “…wish to assess (individuals, households, communities, national, global; Daw et al. 2011; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005), but also with respect to age (Ryan and Deci 2001; Bevan 2007; Blanchflower and Oswald 2008), gender (Sokoya et al. 2005), culture (Bevan 2007), and time span considered.”
How Education Enhances Happiness: Comparison of Mediating Factors in Four East Asian Countries (2012, neutral): “Several studies have reported U-shaped age effects, which suggests a nonlinear trend that goes downward first and upward later through the life course to reach the bottom around middle age (Gerdtham and Johannesson 2001; Yang 2008; Blanchflower and Oswald 2008 ).”
A snapshot of the age distribution of psychological well-being in the United States (2010, neutral): “How WB changes with age is an intriguing question, especially in light of prior findings that Global WB improves from middle age onward, even in the face of physical health decline, and little is known about the determinants of this pattern (5).”
Subjective well-being and engagement in arts, culture and sport (2017, neutral): “Some studies measure well-being as happiness (e.g. Blanchflower and Oswald 2008), while others measure well-being using satisfaction measures including life satisfaction (e.g. Gardner and Oswald 2006) and/or job satisfaction (e.g. Brown et al. 2012).”
UK Unemployment in the Great Recession (2010, positive): “There is a U-shaped pattern in age confirming results found by Blanchflower and Oswald (2008) for 2004Q2– 2007Q1 also using the LFS data.”
Imitative Obesity and Relative Utility (2009, neutral): “Other variables take the pattern familiar from recent well-being research (for example, Blanchflower and Oswald 2008a, 2008b).”
Disentangling the housing satisfaction puzzle: Does homeownership really matter? (2009, neutral): “We found here that the effect of age contrasts with the commonly observed U-shaped effect of age on happiness/SWB (see e.g. Clark et. al., 1996; Blanchflower and Oswald, 2008).23 Dwelling characteristics also behave as expected.”
Good Job, Good Life? Working Conditions and Quality of Life in Europe (2010, neutral): “Finally, we include the following socio-demographic variables as controls in our statistical models: age in linear and quadratic form to capture the non-linear U-shaped effect found in studies on life satisfaction (Blanchflower and Oswald 2008; see also Anxo and Boulin 2006); marital status, disting”