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The Role of Domain Satisfaction in Explaining the Paradoxical Association Between Life Satisfaction and Age

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Abstract

Although aging is associated with declines in many life domains, overall life satisfaction does not appear to decline sharply with age. One explanation for this paradoxical finding is that several life domains improve with age such that increases in certain domains balance the decreases in others. Because different issues are problematic at different life stages, it is likely that specific domains display different life trajectories compared to overall life satisfaction. The observed pattern for overall life satisfaction is likely due to a bottom-up approach. Life and domain satisfaction data from 8 years of the British Household Panel Study were analyzed to evaluate this hypothesis. Results indicated that satisfaction with some life domains increased after middle age (e.g. social life), whereas satisfaction with other life domains decreased (e.g. health). Additionally, results illustrated that although domain satisfaction scores demonstrate distinct trajectories, the aggregate of these distinct domains resembled the overall life satisfaction trajectory. These findings have implications for top-down and bottom-up models of life satisfaction.

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Notes

  1. A detailed description of how participants were selected can be found at http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/files/bhps/quality-profiles/BHPS-QP-01-03-06-v2.pdf.

  2. Age-polynomials included linear, quadratic, cubic, and fourth power polynomials.

  3. The job satisfaction trajectory ends at 75 because this is the last age for which we had sufficient data to include in the analysis. Participants only reported on job satisfaction if they currently held a job, which was uncommon for individuals past retirement age.

  4. We also examined the ability of average domain satisfaction to predict later overall life satisfaction and vice versa. In particular, we evaluated the ability of the previous year’s average domain satisfaction score to predict current overall life satisfaction and we evaluated the ability of the previous year’s overall life satisfaction to predict current average domain satisfaction using multilevel models. Although both effects were statistically significant, the beta weight was much higher when the previous average domain scores were used to predict current life satisfaction (β = .46) than when previous life satisfaction was used to predict current average domain satisfaction (β = .16). These results provide additional support for a bottom-up model, though they could also reflect differential reliability of the two measures.

  5. We examined the pattern of results for individuals during the first year in which they entered the study. In this analysis we only had cross-sectional data; however, the pattern of results was very similar to the predicted trajectory, at least for those participants who had entered the study prior to old age. Average domain satisfaction started to deviate from the predicted trajectories at age 81 for health, age 69 for income, age 76 for house/flat, age 77 for spouse, age 55 for job, and age 82 for the categories of social, amount of leisure time, and use of leisure time. Moreover, the observed trajectories at the starting year mapped closely onto the predicted trajectories of average domain satisfaction and overall life satisfaction until about age 62 and age 63, respectively. See Baird et al. (2010) for a more detailed investigation of the similarities between cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses in the context of age differences in life satisfaction.

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Acknowledgments

Preparation of this manuscript was supported by National Institute on Aging grants 1R03AG026028-01 and 1R03AG028744-01.

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Correspondence to Kimberly K. McAdams.

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McAdams, K.K., Lucas, R.E. & Donnellan, M.B. The Role of Domain Satisfaction in Explaining the Paradoxical Association Between Life Satisfaction and Age. Soc Indic Res 109, 295–303 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-011-9903-9

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