The U-shaped relationship between happiness and age: evidence using world values survey data

• Main Author: Beja, Edsel L, Jr
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2017
• Subjects: Happiness; Age; U-shaped relationship; Multilevel regression; Economics
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/economics-faculty-pubs/11; https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11135-017-0570-z
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

The paper retests the U-shaped relationship between happiness and age using the cross-classified multilevel regression procedure and the World Values Survey data. The analysis accounts for period and cohort effects. The results reconfirm the pattern that happiness is U-shaped in the life course. That is, happiness decreases from a high-point in young adulthood, reaches a low-point in midlife, and thereafter increases to arrive at another high-point in old age. The results show that the high-point of happiness in old age is lower than the high-point of happiness in young adulthood. That happiness does not return to its initial high-point after it drops to a low-point in midlife is perhaps another stylized fact in the relationship between happiness and age.