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Quality & Quantity

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19.12.2015

The U-shaped age–happiness relationship: real or methodological artifact?

verfasst von: Ottar Hellevik

Erschienen in: Quality & Quantity | Ausgabe 1/2017

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Abstract

Economists studying subjective well-being commonly conclude that its relationship with age is U-shaped. Data from a large Norwegian survey project show that this holds for cognitive well-being (life satisfaction), but not for emotional well-being (happiness), which declines with age. When a U-shaped relationship between age and happiness is reported, it is a result of controlling for variables such as health and family situation, which lie between age and happiness in the causal hierarchy, mediating indirect effect between them. Controlling for intervening variables may lead to misinterpretations of what actually happens to feelings of happiness as people age, since the negative effects on happiness of deteriorating health or loss of partner are consequences of growing older and therefore should not be controlled away. A relevant control variable is cohort, since it may produce spurious association between age (life phase) and happiness. Using multiple regression analysis instead of cohort analysis to separate aging and cohort effects, runs into severe collinearity and missing data problems.

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The article was submitted to SSM, where the editors decided “not forwarding your manuscript for further consideration, as we feel its focus makes this better suited to a psychological health journal”. Replying that the article was a follow up to a three article debate in SSM, did not alter their decision. I find this surprising, seen in relation to the scientific ideal of advancing knowledge through critique of earlier findings. As readers of this article may judge for themselves, the conclusions in the reply by Blanchflower and Oswald, which are now left uncontested in SSM, are shown to be wrong. The decision of SSM seems even more peculiar considering that in the same period, another article on the U-curve was considered and accepted for publication by SSM (Piper 2015).

For example, the Norwegian surveys from the World Values Study (WVS) (for the years 1982, 1990, and 1996) found between 28 and 30 % very happy, and between 5 and 7 % not happy (Listhaug et al. 1983; Listhaug and Huseby 1990; Listhaug et al. 1997). This difference in results is probably an interviewer effect, rendering the proportion “very happy” slightly higher and the proportion “not happy” lower in face-to-face interviews (as in the WVS) than in a self-completion questionnaire (as in the NM). This phenomenon, referred to as “impression management” by the respondents (Diener et al. 1999), reflects that the question of happiness is a socially sensitive one.

The interview indicates that even Oswald himself may have misunderstood the causal meaning of the control, since he was quoted as saying that he, having turned 54, now enjoyed the boost in happiness that his research seemed to document (Eggen 2008).

As an example the age and cohort variables with the same value intervals as in Table 3, of 7 respectively 10 years, have a correlation of 0.89.

Standard modeling software can automatically handle many regressor variables and produce results, although they can be remarkably misleading. With many confounding covariates, however, the issues of lack of adequate overlap and reliance on untrustworthy model-based extrapolations are even more serious than with only one confounding covariate” (Rubin 1997, p. 759).

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Titel: The U-shaped age–happiness relationship: real or methodological artifact?
verfasst von: Ottar Hellevik
Publikationsdatum: 19.12.2015
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Quality & Quantity / Ausgabe 1/2017
Print ISSN: 0033-5177
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-7845
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-015-0300-3

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