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"What Makes Life Good? A Life Course Analysis of Life Satisfaction"

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Thursday, November 05, 2015
3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Anthony Bardo - Duke University
DuPRI Seminar Series

ABSTRACT: How does life improve and/or worsen with age? On the one hand, there is a rich gerontological literature that documents age-related declines in objective components of life quality, such as health and wealth. On the other hand, the relationship between age and subjective well-being (SWB) is relatively unknown. For example, how is SWB distributed across age, across society over time, and across birth cohorts? Domain satisfaction is a particularly useful measure to examine life-course patterns in SWB, because it can reflect both domain-specific satisfaction (e.g., satisfaction with family, friends, place of residence, health, and hobbies) and overall life satisfaction. Nationally representative data (i.e., GSS 1973-1994) and hierarchal age-period-cohort analysis (Yang and Land 2006) are utilized to examine life-course patterns in overall domain satisfaction and domain-specific satisfaction. I find that overall domain satisfaction slightly declines across the life span and is relatively stable across society over time. While age-period-cohort trends in overall domain satisfaction are found to be relatively stable, it is expected that satisfaction across specific domains varies more substantially. #4824

Contact: Mekisha Mebane