Well-being paradox: comparing the age-happiness relationship across Japan, China, and the US

Takashi Oshio () and Satoshi Shimizutani ()
Additional contact information
Takashi Oshio: Institute of Economic Research
Satoshi Shimizutani: Nagoya University

The Japanese Economic Review, 2024, vol. 75, issue 4, No 4, 547-562

Abstract: Abstract Many researchers have discussed the “well-being paradox,” that subjective well-being tends to be stable or even improving in later life despite worsening health and social losses. Using repeated cross-sectional survey data from Japan (2000–2018), China (2003–2021), and the US (2000–2022) and controlling for period and cohort effects, we compared the trajectory of happiness over age across the three countries. We observed U shaped age-happiness curves across the three countries, despite different troughs (at age 58 years in Japan somewhat later than at age 49 years in China and at age 42 years in the US) and curvatures (sharper in Japan and China than in the US). We also examined how and to what extent changes in marital status, job status, and self-rated health affected the impact of age on happiness and found that spousal loss was a dominant intervening factor in all countries. The slope of the U-shaped curve becomes steeper after controlling for these intervening variables in all three countries, confirming the robustness of the well-being paradox.

Keywords: Well-being paradox; Happiness; Japan; China; United States (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I31 J14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s42973-024-00169-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jecrev:v:75:y:2024:i:4:d:10.1007_s42973-024-00169-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/42973

DOI: 10.1007/s42973-024-00169-2

Access Statistics for this article

The Japanese Economic Review is currently edited by Michihiro Kandori

More articles in The Japanese Economic Review from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().