Previous happiness research has explicitly assumed that subjective well-being is U-shaped in age.
This paper sheds new light on this issue testing several functional forms. Using micro data from the World
Values Survey on 44 000 persons in 30 economically advanced OECD countries with long life
expectancies, we reveal a hyperbolic functional form. We find that life satisfaction reaches another local
maximum around the age of 83, with a level identical to that of a 26-year old. This hyperbolic well-beingage
relation is robust to the inclusion of cohort effects. We test this relationship for each OECD country
separately, and corroborate the functional form using a sample of non-OECD countries.
Happiness and Age Cycles ‑ Return to Start...?
On the Functional Relationship between Subjective Well-Being and Age
