Healthy, Wealthy, Wise, and Happy? Assessing Age Differences in Evaluative and Emotional Well-Being Among Mature Adults from Five Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Clémence Kieny (), Gabriela Flores (), Michael Ingenhaag () and Jürgen Maurer ()
Additional contact information
Clémence Kieny: University of Lausanne
Gabriela Flores: University of Lausanne
Michael Ingenhaag: University of Lausanne
Jürgen Maurer: University of Lausanne

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2022, vol. 160, issue 2, No 27, 1019-1050

Abstract: Abstract This study assesses the relationship between age and two dimensions of subjective well-being—evaluative and emotional—among mature adults from five low-and middle-income countries. We use data from the World Health Organization’s Study on Global AGEing and Adult Health to contrast the associations of age with subjective well-being when controlling only for gender with the corresponding partial associations when including a richer set of covariates. Adjusting only for gender, we find negative associations of age with evaluative well-being, while the corresponding age gradients for emotional well-being are relatively flat. By contrast, adjusting for further socio-demographic factors results in positive associations of age with both evaluative and emotional well-being. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions allow us to explore the roles of two factors to account for any unadjusted age differences in subjective well-being: age-group differences in individual characteristics and life circumstances, and age-specific associations of individual characteristics and life circumstances with subjective well-being. While adverse circumstances such as poor health and low income contribute to lower levels of evaluative well-being among older adults, age per se is—ceteris paribus—positively associated with subjective well-being. Even in poorer countries, older age does not need to be a time of low subjective well-being. Policies aimed at preserving income and limiting or compensating old-age disability appear to be key for maintaining subjective well-being among older adults.

Keywords: Subjective well-being; Evaluative well-being; Emotional well-being; Age differences; Low- and middle-income countries; Decomposition analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-020-02515-4 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:soinre:v:160:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s11205-020-02515-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-020-02515-4

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().