Subjective Well-being Across the Lifespan in Europe and Central Asia

Abstract

Using data from the Integrated Values Survey (IVS), the Life in Transition Survey (LiTS), and the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS), we analyse the relation between age and subjective well-being in the World Bank's Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region and compare it to that in Western Europe. Although our results generally confirm previous studies' findings of a U-shaped relation between subjective well-being and age for most of the lifecycle, we also find that well-being in ECA declines again after the 70s, giving rise to an Sshape relation across the entire lifespan. When controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, this pattern generally remains robust for most of our cross-sectional and panel analyses. Hence, despite significant heterogeneity in the pattern of well-being across the lifespan within the ECA region, we do not observe high levels of crosscountry or crosscohort variation.

The U Shape of Happiness Across the Life Course: Expanding the Discussion

“…Table 1 reveals that several cross-sectional studies documented a U shape using life satisfaction, the Cantril ladder, and happiness items (Beja, 2018; Cheng et al, 2015; Daroudi, Rashidian, Zeraati, Oliyaeemanesh, & Sari, 2016; Graham & Pozuelo, 2017; Grover & Helliwell, 2019; Lin, 2016; Ruseski, Humphreys, Hallman, Wicker, & Breuer, 2014; Schwandt, 2016), but others found mixed evidence. That is, the shape (and associated nadirs and peaks) of the age-happiness connection varied depending on the country and region of the world (Bauer, Levin, Boudet, Nie, & Sousa-Poza, 2017; Laaksonen, 2018; Morgan, Robinson, & Thompson, 2015; Steptoe et al, 2015), whether control variables such as education and marital status were included in the analyses (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2019; Ferrante, 2017; Hellevik, 2017), year or period of time when the surveys were administered (Kolosnitsyna, Khorkina, & Dorzhiev, 2017; Olaroiu, Alexa, & van den Heuvel, 2017), and gender (Kolosnitsyna et al, 2017; Laaksonen, 2018). Some studies found a U shape, but the low point was outside of the typical range of midlife (defined as 40–60 years of age; Freund & Ritter, 2009), for example, in the 30s (Laaksonen, 2018; Li, 2016) or up to age 70 (Kolosnitsyna et al, 2017).…”

“…The Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study followed 10-year age bands of adults ages 25 to 75 for a decade; there was no change in life satisfaction from the 20s to the 40s, but life satisfaction increased from the 40s to the 60s and was followed by a decline until the age of 70 (Lachman, Teshale, & Agrigoroaei, 2015). Data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, which followed multiple age cohorts from the teens to the 80s, documented several age patterns in life satisfaction (U-shaped, S-shaped, downward, and upward) depending on the analysis (Bauer et al, 2017).…”

Poverty Does Make Us Sick

“…Since the LITS allow for full cross-country comparability, the survey has been used in a variety of comparative health research (e.g. Bauer et al, 2017; Nikolova and Sanfey, 2016) [5354]. Here, we focus on Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.…”

The Effects of Healthcare Quality on the Willingness to Pay More Taxes to Improve Public Healthcare: Testing Two Alternative Hypotheses from the Research Literature

“…In the fifth and final step, one member of each identified household was selected for interview with a trained interviewer based on the “last birthday” selection rule. Because of its full cross-country comparability and high quality, the LITS has been used in several comparative health studies [122526].…”