Illbeing Among the Young in Europe: Evidence from the COME HERE Panel

David Blanchflower (), Alex Bryson (), Anthony Lepinteur () and Alan Piper ()
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David Blanchflower: Dartmouth College
Alex Bryson: University College London
Anthony Lepinteur: University of Luxembourg
Alan Piper: Leeds University Business School

No 18803, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: A substantial literature finds poor mental health is hump-shaped with respect to age, whilst subjective wellbeing is U-shaped. Recent cross-sectional studies indicate a change in this relationship driven by the declining mental health of the young. We contribute to this literature by re-examining the age patterns in subjective wellbeing and illbeing for individuals in five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden). We do so with fifteen waves of the COME-HERE (CH) panel survey for 2020-2025 plus data from the Global Minds (GM) surveys of 2020-2026 for the same countries. We show that wellbeing rises and illbeing declines in a roughly monotonic fashion with age. This is found both with cross-section data from the CH and GM data, and from longitudinal plots of person fixed effects by age in the CH data.

Keywords: subjective wellbeing; mental health; age; despair; panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07
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