April 2013

IZA DP No. 7328: How Does Subjective Well-Being Evolve with Age? A Literature Review

Beatriz Fabiola López Ulloa, Valerie Moller, Alfonso Sousa-Poza

published in: Journal of Population Ageing, 2013, 6 (3), 227-246

This literature review provides an overview of the theoretical and empirical research in several disciplines on the relation between ageing and subjective well-being, i.e., how subjective well-being evolves across the lifespan. Because of the different methodologies, data sets and samples used, comparison among disciplines and studies is difficult. However, extant studies do show either a U-shaped, inverted U-shaped or linear relation between ageing and subjective well-being.