Healthy, Wealthy, Wise, and Happy? An Exploratory Analysis of the Interplay between Aging and Subjective Well-Being in Low and Middle Income Countries

Type Working Paper
Title Healthy, Wealthy, Wise, and Happy? An Exploratory Analysis of the Interplay between Aging and Subjective Well-Being in Low and Middle Income Countries
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2013
URL http://www.hec.unil.ch/deep/textes/13.13.pdf
Abstract
In this paper, we address the relationship between age and several dimension of subjective wellbeing. Whilst literature generally finds a U-shaped age-profile in subjective well-being, this agepattern might only hold after controlling for objective life circumstances. The observed U-shaped age-profile might further not generalize to other dimensions of well-being and might vary across countries and cultures. Our study examines the relationship between age and several dimensions of well-being as well as the effect of objective life circumstances using the WHO Study on Global AGEing and Adult Health (SAGE). Our results suggest a decreasing age profile in the raw data associated with evaluative well-being, while experienced well-being shows a rather flat or slightly increasing pattern. However, age per se is not a cause of a decline in evaluative well-being. The negative age-profile in evaluative well-being is mainly explained by changes in life circumstances associated with aging. Controlling for socio-demographic factors, we find higher levels of well-being for older persons relative to their middle-aged counterparts. In contrast, we find that changes in life circumstances have a much smaller effect on experienced well-being.

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