Throughout adulthood and old age, levels of well-being appear to remain relatively stable. However, evidence is emerging that late in life well-being declines considerably. Using long-term longitudinal data of deceased participants in national samples from Germany, the UK, and the US, we examine how long this period lasts. In all three nations and across the adult age range, well-being was relatively stable over age, but declined rapidly with impending death. Articulating notions of terminal decline associated with impending death, we identified prototypical transition points in each study between three and five years prior to death, after which normative rates of decline steepened by a factor of three or more. The findings suggest that mortality-related mechanisms drive late-life changes in wellbeing and highlight the need for further refinement of psychological concepts about how and when late-life declines in psychosocial functioning prototypically begin.
KeywordsSelective mortality; successful aging; differential aging; psychosocial factors; well-being; multiphase growth model Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published version is available at www.apa.org/pubs/journals/PAG NIH Public Access Empirical evidence indicates that individuals throughout adulthood and old age typically report being satisfied with their lives (see Diener et al., 2006). The objective of this study is to corroborate and extend recent studies that challenge this prevailing view (Gerstorf, Ram et al., 2008a,b;Mroczek & Spiro, 2005). Drawing from notions of terminal decline, we argue that individuals usually have enough resources to maintain a sense of well-being, even in the face of age-related risks for social losses and declining health (Guralnik, 1991;Suzman et al., 1992). At some point before death, however, additional mortality-related burdens and systemic dysfunction may become too difficult to cope with and functionality declines straight into death (Kleemeier, 1962;Riegel & Riegel, 1972). Despite these notions having been around for several decades, specific conceptual predictions and empirical descriptions regarding if and how terminal decline involves well-being have not yet been developed. Our purpose here is to use longitudinal data from three nationally representative samples to ask two questions about terminal decline in well-being: Do normative late-life changes in well-being across the adult life span conform to a pattern expected by terminal decline? If so, when does terminal decline prototypically begin?Theories of self-regulation and lifespan development b...