The Effect of Birth Cohort on Well-Being

Angelina R. Sutin; Antonio Terracciano; Yuri Milaneschi; Yang An; Luigi Ferrucci; Alan B. Zonderman

doi:10.1177/0956797612459658

The Effect of Birth Cohort on Well-Being

Angelina R. Sutin^1,2; Antonio Terracciano^1,2; Yuri Milaneschi^1,3; Yang An¹; Luigi Ferrucci¹; Alan B. Zonderman¹

¹ National Institute on Aging, Baltimore, Maryland · ² Florida State University College of Medicine · ³ Department of Psychiatry, VU University Medical Center

Psychological Science 2013

In the present research, we examined the effects of age, cohort, and time of measurement on well-being across adulthood. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of two independent samples—one with more than 10,000 repeated assessments across 30 years (mean assessments per participant = 4.44, SD = 3.47) and one with nationally representative data—suggested that well-being declines with age. This decline, however, reversed when we controlled for birth cohort. That is, once we accounted for the fact that older cohorts had lower levels of well-being, all cohorts increased in well-being with age relative to their own baseline. Participants tested more recently had higher well-being, but time of measurement, unlike cohort, did not change the shape of the trajectory. Although well-being increased with age for everyone, cohorts that lived through the economic challenges of the early 20th century had lower well-being than those born during more prosperous times.

DOI: 10.1177/0956797612459658
Volume: 24 (3)
Pages: 379-385
Language: en
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Sources: crossref