This article is concerned with a body of work on happiness and age represented by important papers such as Mroczek and Kolarz (1998) and Mroczek and Spiro (2005). Using a large British data set, the paper presents new longitudinal evidence. It also points out that, perhaps unknown to many psychologists, a parallel literature on this topic exists in economics journals. The paper shows that subjective well-being follows a U-shape through the life course. We argue that eventually the two literatures will have to be made consistent with one another, and suggest that, although it is not easy to live in both worlds, with their different styles and conventions, economists and psychologists still have much to learn from one another.happiness ; ageing ; well-being

Andrew E. Clark

Andrew J. Oswald

English

Research Papers in Economics

 
PARIS-JOURDAN SCIENCES ECONOMIQUES 
48, BD JOURDAN – E.N.S. – 75014 PARIS 
TEL. : 33(0) 1 43 13 63 00   –   FAX : 33 (0) 1 43 13 63 10 
www.pse.ens.fr 
 
  WORKING PAPER N° 2006 - 29 
 
 
 
The curved relationship between 
 
subjective well-being and age 
 
 
Andrew E. Clark 
 
Andrew J. Oswald 
 
 
  JEL Codes : C23, I31, J10 
 
  Keywords : Happiness, ageing, well-being 
 
CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA  RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE – ÉCOLE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES 
ÉCOLE NATIONALE DES PONTS ET CHAUSSÉES – ÉCOLE NORMALE SUPÉRIEURE 
 
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1  1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Curved Relationship Between  
Subjective Well-Being and Age 
 
 
 
 
Andrew E. Clark 
PSE and IZA, Paris, France 
Email: andrew.clark@ens.fr 
 
 
Andrew J. Oswald 
University of Warwick, UK 
Email: andrew.oswald@warwick.ac.uk 
 
 
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1  2 
 
 
 
The Curved Relationship Between  
Subjective Well-Being and Age 
 
 
October 10, 2006 
 
 
 
Abstract 
 
 
This article is concerned with a body of work on happiness and age represented by 
important papers such as Mroczek and Kolarz (1998) and Mroczek and Spiro (2005).  
Using a large British data set, the paper presents new longitudinal evidence.  It also 
points out that, perhaps unknown to many psychologists, a parallel literature on this 
topic exists in economics journals.  The paper shows that subjective well-being follows 
a U-shape through the life course.  We argue that eventually the two literatures will 
have to be made consistent with one another, and suggest that, although it is not easy to 
live  in  both  worlds,  with  their  different  styles  and  conventions,  economists  and 
psychologists still have much to learn from one another.  
 
 
 
 
 
Keywords: Happiness; ageing; well-being 
Corresponding author: andrew.oswald@warwick.ac.uk.  
Address: Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, 
United Kingdom.   
Telephone: (+44) 02476 523510 
Acknowledgements: Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques (PSE) is a Joint Research 
Unit  CNRS-EHESS-ENPC-ENS.  The  second  author’s  work  was  funded  by  an 
ESRC professorial research fellowship 
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1  3 
 The Curved Relationship Between  
Subjective Well-Being and Age 
 
 
The relationship between happiness and age is important but still imperfectly understood.  On 
page 1336 of an interesting article in this journal, Mroczek and Kolarz (1998) state that, to 
their knowledge, “no previous study has considered the possibility of nonlinear relationships 
between age and happiness.”  A follow-up study by Mroczek and Spiro (2005) is in the same 
spirit  but  uses  different  methods.    The  former  article  finds  that  positive  affect  has  an 
upwardly  curved  component;  the  latter  suggests  that  subjective  well-being  follows  an 
inverted U-shape and peaks at around age 60.  On our reading of these two papers, they are 
important work.  They are currently acquiring high numbers of citations in the Social Science 
Citation Index.  A literature in psychology journals is growing up around them. 
 
We present new longitudinal evidence on this issue.  Its chief finding does not seem to exist 
in the psychology journals.  A second aim of our article is to alert psychologists to a parallel 
literature on the nonlinear relationship between happiness and age.  It is research published 
mainly in economics journals.  This stream of work may have originated from Clark and 
Oswald (1994).  Using a 12-item measure of psychological well-being, and a cross-section of 
6100 randomly sampled Britons from the first wave of the British Household Panel Survey, 
that paper found mental well-being to be U-shaped in age.  The authors’ data were for 1991.  
The paper drew the conclusion that the happiness minimum along the U is reached around a 
person’s mid-30s.   
 
Since then, a body of work by economists and statisticians has suggested, across a range of 
settings, that the relationship between subjective well-being and age is curved.  Almost every 
study replicates the basic conclusion: that happiness is U-shaped in age, with a minimum 
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point in a range from the mid-30s to approximately the late-40s.  The result has now been 
demonstrated for perhaps fifty nations.  It has been found especially in data from Western 
countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Italy, Belgium, 
Germany, Spain, and Switzerland.   
 
The U-shape in age is documented in, for example, Gerlach and Stephan (1996), Oswald 
(1997), Theodossiou (1998), Winkelmann and Winkelmann (1998), Di Tella et al (2001), 
Frey and Stutzer (2002), Helliwell (2003), Blanchflower and Oswald (2004), Graham (2005), 
Frijters et al (2004, 2005), Senik (2004), Van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2004), Clark 
(2005), Long (2005), Shields and Wheatley Price (2005), Propper et al (2005), Powdthavee 
(2005), Bell and Blanchflower (2006), and Uppal (2006).  Blanchflower (2001) documents 
the U-shape in 23 East European transition nations.  Di Tella et al (2003) provides the same 
for 12 separate Western industrial nations.  Clark et al (1996) makes a similar argument for 
job  satisfaction  equations,  and  also  gives  some  results  for  mental  well-being  equations.  
Recently,  Blanchflower  and  Oswald  (2006),  using  data  on  approximately  half  a  million 
Europeans and Americans, argues that allowance for the inclusion of cohort effects makes 
little difference to the finding of a U-shape.  
 
These papers’ methods vary slightly.  Nevertheless, each of them, as in the work of Mroczek 
and Kolarz (1998), draws upon multiple-regression models.  In this way, factors other than 
age are held constant.   
 
We here report briefly an updated version of the results of Clark and Oswald (1994).  Since 
then, the British Household Panel Survey has happened annually, so it is possible to re-do 
those calculations on a longitudinal data set now exceeding 100,000 observations.  A new 
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test can now be done, in which both fixed-effects and age can be allowed for in a multiple 
regression equation framework. 
 
One variable we use is life satisfaction.  It is measured on a seven point scale from 1 (not 
satisfied at all) to 7 (completely satisfied).  Over all 14 waves of the BHPS, this has a mean 
of 5.19 with standard deviation 1.26. 
 
Another  is a  General  Health  Questionnaire (GHQ) score.   This  is  a  questionnaire-based 
method of measuring psychological well-being and has been used widely in the health and 
epidemiological research literature (for recent examples, see Cardozo et al 2000, Martikainen 
et al 2003, and Pevalin and Ermish 2004).  It amalgamates answers to the following list of 
twelve questions: 
Have you recently: 
1.  Been able to concentrate on whatever you are doing? 
2.  Lost much sleep over worry? 
3.  Felt that you are playing a useful part in things? 
4.  Felt capable of making decisions about things? 
5.  Felt constantly under strain? 
6.  Felt you could not overcome your difficulties? 
7.  Been able to enjoy your normal day-to-day activities? 
8.  Been able to face up to your problems? 
9.  Been feeling unhappy and depressed? 
10. Been losing confidence in yourself? 
11. Been thinking of yourself as a worthless person? 
12. Been feeling reasonably happy all things considered? 
 
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Responses are made on a four-point scale of frequency of a feeling in relation to a person's 
usual state: "Not at all", "No more than usual", "Rather more than usual", and "Much more 
than usual".  
 
The between-item validity of the GHQ-12 is high in the BHPS, with a Cronbach alpha of 
0.89.  For simplicity, we use the so-called Caseness GHQ score, which counts up the number 
of questions for which the response is in one of the two "low well-being" categories.  This 
count is then reversed, to convert it into a well-being rather than ill-being score, which thus 
runs from a possible low of 0 (all twelve responses indicating poor psychological health) to a 
high  of  12  (no  responses  indicating  poor  psychological  health).    The  well-being  GHQ 
measure has mean of 10.14 and standard deviation of 2.92. 
 
Life-satisfaction and GHQ measures of subjective well-being seem valuably complementary.  
They capture different aspects of affect.  However, as we show below, the two exhibit a 
similar pattern over the life course. 
 
Although the size of the BHPS data set has expanded since the initial research was done, and 
it is now possible to control for people’s unchanging dispositions (fixed effects), the main 
conclusion remains approximately the same as in the simpler evidence of Clark and Oswald 
(1994).  Both wellbeing-GHQ and life satisfaction are U-shaped across age groups.  In the 
full longitudinal data set here from 1991 to 2004, it reaches a minimum in the age range 40-
49, which is a little later than the early estimate that came out of our single-year of 1991 data.  
The coefficients on the other age-bands reveal a fairly smooth curve -- down and then up -- 
through the lifespan. This finding is not sensitive to the exact specification of the well-being 
equations.  The pattern in the raw data is illustrated in Figure 1 for the latest wave at our 
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disposal, which is 2004.  As is clear from the Figure, it is not necessary to use regression 
equations to see the approximate U-shape across age-groups. 
 
It is known that many variables shape subjective well-being (Diener et al 1999, Easterlin 
2003, Lucas et al 2004, and Gilbert 2006).  If we control in the regression equations for 
region, year, income, the work status of the individual (ie. whether employee, self-employed, 
unemployed, retired from work), the number of children, gender, marital status, whether a 
renter  or  home-owner, the level of education,  and  subjective physical  health,  then, once 
again, well-being reaches a minimum in the age band 40-49.   
 
For  the  formal  analysis,  as  say  reported using  simple  methods  in  Table  1,  it  makes  no 
substantive difference whether we use logistic regression or simple methods like Ordinary 
Least Squares (OLS), or random-effects or fixed-effects models.  The third column of Table 
1 follows the same individuals through time -- annually from 1991 to 2004 -- whilst holding 
constant their unchanging fixed-effects, and allowing for many other characteristics such as 
marital status.  By using banded age dummy-variables, in a way that to our knowledge has 
not been done before in longitudinal work of this sort, in either the psychology or economics 
literatures, Table 1 provides clear evidence of a U-shape.  
 
Our finding of a U-shape using longitudinal data does not appear to exist in the psychology 
literature.  It is not clear why the results of this economics research literature differ in some 
significant  ways  from,  say,  those  in  Mroczek  and  Spiro  (2005),  which  finds  almost  the 
reverse -- an inverted U-shape in age.  It seems important that future work explore these 
interesting issues more fully.  A deeper theoretical understanding of the empirical happiness-
age curve will also be required.   
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Psychologists  were  working  on  well-being  data  some  decades  before  researchers  in 
economics (Bradburn 1969, Diener 1984).  We hope, nevertheless, that this short article 
might be a useful guide to economists’ writings on happiness and age.   
 
Over recent decades, economists -- including ourselves -- have been guilty of not reading the 
psychology journals sufficiently.  Psychologists, similarly, may not have read the economics 
journals  as much  as might  be  ideal.   Despite  the  methodological  differences, both  sides 
would, arguably, benefit if we could learn to communicate more effectively.  
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Figure 1. Mean Life-Satisfaction and Wellbeing-GHQ in British Data. BHPS Wave 14 (2004) 
Mean Life Satisfaction. BHPS 2004
4.7
4.8
4.9
5
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
5.5
5.6
16-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69
Mean GHQ. BHPS 2004
9.85
9.9
9.95
10
10.05
10.1
10.15
10.2
10.25
10.3
10.35
16-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69
 
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Table 1. Well-Being Regressions. BHPS Waves 1-14. 
 
No controls Demographic 
controls
Demographic 
controls plus 
Individual Fixed 
Effects
Age 20-29 -0.154** -0.230** -0.161**
(0.021) (0.023) (0.025)
Age 30-39 -0.224** -0.380** -0.170**
(0.023) (0.029) (0.034)
Age 40-49 -0.315** -0.487** -0.187**
(0.024) (0.031) (0.042)
Age 50-59 -0.155** -0.334** -0.165**
(0.026) (0.032) (0.050)
Age 60-69 0.188** -0.053 -0.061
(0.028) (0.038) (0.059)
Constant 5.339** 5.023** 4.938**
(0.019) (0.036) (0.496)
Observations 90567 87797 87797
R-squared 0.014 0.146 0.025
No controls Demographic 
controls
Demographic 
controls plus 
Individual Fixed 
Effects
Age 20-29 -0.093** -0.223** -0.228**
(0.036) (0.040) (0.045)
Age 30-39 -0.248** -0.399** -0.374**
(0.042) (0.053) (0.064)
Age 40-49 -0.347** -0.452** -0.464**
(0.045) (0.057) (0.081)
Age 50-59 -0.228** -0.186** -0.314**
(0.048) (0.059) (0.099)
Age 60-69 0.157** 0.197** -0.106
(0.049) (0.067) (0.119)
Constant 10.265** 9.204** 9.625**
(0.032) (0.067) (1.247)
Observations 145424 141875 141875
R-squared 0.003 0.119 0.032
Notes. The omitted age band is 16-19 years old. Standard errors in parentheses. 
* significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%. The controls in columns 2 and 3 are for 
income, labour force status, number of children, sex, marital status, education, 
health,and wave and regional dummies. 
Life Satisfaction
GHQ
 
 
 
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A paper on unhappiness and unemployment in Germany.

Change in life satisfaction during adulthood: Findings from the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging study.

Cohabiting unions, repartnering and mental health.

Effects of income and wealth on GHQ depression and poor self-rated health in white collar women and h a l s h s -0 , v e r s i o n -M a y 1 12 men in the Whitehall II study.

Explaining happiness.

Exploring the economic and social determinants of psychological well-being and perceived social support in England.

Happily ever after? A study of job satisfaction in Australia.

Happiness and economic performance.

Happiness and economics.

Happiness quantified: A satisfaction calculus approach.

How’s life? Combining individual and national variables to explain subjective well-being.

Impact of the timing and severity of disability on the subjective well-being of individuals with disabilities.

Insights on development from the economics of happiness.

Is job satisfaction U-shaped in age?

Is well-being U-shaped over the life cycle? Unpublished paper,

Local neighbourhood and mental health: Evidence from the UK.

Mental health, social functioning, and attitudes of Kosovar Albanians following the war in Kosovo.

Money does matter!

Preferences over inflation and unemployment: Evidence from surveys of happiness.

Stumbling on happiness. Alfred A Knopf:

Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress.

Subjective well-being.

The causal effect of income on health: Evidence from German reunification.

The effect of age on positive and negative affect: A developmental perspective on happiness.

The effects of low-pay and unemployment on psychological wellbeing: A logistic regression approach.

The macroeconomics of happiness.

The structure of psychological well-being.

Unemployment alters the set point for life satisfaction.

Unemployment, well-being and wage curves in Eastern and Central Europe.

Unhappiness and crime: Evidence from South Africa.

Unhappiness and unemployment.

When information dominates comparison – Learning from Russian subjective panel data.

Why are the unemployed so unhappy? Evidence from panel data.

Your money or your life: Changing job quality in OECD countries.

The curved relationship between subjective well-being and age

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The curved relationship between subjective well-being and age

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