engleski

Subjective well-being during the lifespan in the Mediterranean: U-shaped curve, declining or no change?

In the EU context of rapidly ageing societies, the well-being of different age groups becomes an important topic of public policies. In the past few decades, several researchers have identified a U- shaped relation between age and subjective well- being. However, some authors have found a decrease in well-being throughout the lifecycle in middle income and transition countries. It seems that life satisfaction is more negatively affected by age in poorer than in richer countries. Knowing that households incomes in Mediterranean countries are significantly lower than in northern Europe, the primary focus of the paper is to examine the effect that age has on subjective wellbeing in the Mediterranean. The data from the European Quality of Life Survey - EQLS (round 4) were used for the analysis. The survey was conducted during 2016 and 2017 on representative samples of the adult population within 28 EU countries + Albania, FYR of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey. The sample included n = 16, 493 respondents living in 11 Mediterranean countries and n = 20, 415 respondents from 22 Non-Mediterranean countries. The respondents were equally distributed by gender (51.6% women), with the age range between 18 and 95 years (M = 48.14, SD = 18.08). For the lifespan comparison, we used five age groups (18-24, 25-34, 35-49, 50-64 and 65+). Cross-national population weights were applied to ensure representativeness of group comparisons. The results showed that subjective wellbeing measured as happiness and life satisfaction is generally lower in the Mediterranean in comparison to Non- Mediterranean countries and that it generally declines by age. However, the decline in wellbeing by age is much more pronounced in Non-Mediterranean countries than In the Mediterranean. Moreover, after controlling for income and financial deprivation no systematic decline in wellbeing by age in Mediterranean countries was observed. In the paper, we discuss the potential explanatory factors of these difference between the trends of subjective well- being across the lifespan in Medetarenean and Non- Mediterranean countries.

quality of life, subjective well-being, Mediterranean, age, lifespan

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