scholarly journals Endogenous Selection Bias and Cumulative Inequality over the Life Course: Evidence from Educational Inequality in Subjective Well-Being

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-350
Author(s):  
Fabian Kratz ◽  
Alexander Patzina
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Panel Data ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Subjective Well Being ◽  
Interviewer Effects ◽  
Endogenous Selection ◽  
The Life Course

Abstract According to theories of cumulative (dis-)advantage, inequality increases over the life course. Labour market research has seized this argument to explain the increasing economic inequality as people age. However, evidence for cumulative (dis-)advantage in subjective well-being remains ambiguous, and a prominent study from the United States has reported contradictory results. Here, we reconcile research on inequality in subjective well-being with theories of cumulative (dis-)advantage. We argue that the age-specific endogenous selection of the (survey) population results in decreasing inequalities in subjective well-being means whereas individual-level changes show a pattern of cumulative (dis-)advantage. Using repeated cross-sectional data from the European Social Survey (N = 15,252) and employing hierarchical age-period-cohort models, we replicate the finding of decreasing inequality from the United States with the same research design for Germany. Using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (persons = 47,683, person-years = 360,306) and employing growth curve models, we show that this pattern of decreasing inequality in subjective well-being means is accompanied by increasing inequality in intra-individual subjective well-being changes. This pattern arises because disadvantaged groups, such as the low educated and individuals with low subjective well-being show lower probabilities of continuing to participate in a survey and because both determinants reinforce each other. In addition to allowing individual changes and attrition processes to be examined, the employed multi-cohort panel data have further key advantages for examining inequality in subjective well-being over the life course: They require weaker assumptions to control for period and cohort effects and make it possible to control for interviewer effects that may influence the results.

The U-Shape of Happiness: A Response

2021 ◽  
pp. 174569162098439
Author(s):  
David G. Blanchflower ◽  
Carol L. Graham
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Adolescence ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The Life Course

We write in response to an article published in this journal, “The U Shape of Happiness Across the Life Course: Expanding the Discussion,” by Galambos, Krahn, Johnson and Lachman. The authors claim that “support for the purported U shape is not as robust and generalizable as is often assumed” and “we believe the conclusion that happiness declines from late adolescence to midlife (the first half of the U shape) is premature, and possibly wrong.” We respectfully disagree. The authors’ main evidence is based on summaries of 33 articles; they find 12 to have U shapes, seven to have none, and 14 to be mixed. We found that most of these articles are misclassified: Four of them are ineligible for inclusion, 25 find a U, and four are mixed. We then identified a further 353 articles, including 329 in peer-reviewed journals, that all found U shapes that were not identified in the literature review. This is a major omission. We also present our own evidence of midlife nadirs in well-being using around eight and a half million individual observations from nationally representative surveys for the United States and Europe. The midlife low occurs in the mid-40s and its drop is equivalent to roughly three quarters of the unprecedented drop observed in well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.

scholarly journals Midlife as a pivotal period in the life course

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margie E. Lachman ◽  
Salom Teshale ◽  
Stefan Agrigoroaei
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Middle Age ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Cross Sectional Studies ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Health And Well Being

We provide evidence for multidirectionality, variability, and plasticity in the nature and direction of change in physical health, cognitive functioning, and well-being during the middle years of the life course. The picture of well-being in midlife based on longitudinal data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study is a more positive one than portrayed in previous cross-sectional studies. We present middle age as a pivotal period in the life course in terms of balancing growth and decline, linking earlier and later periods of life, and bridging younger and older generations. We highlight the role of protective factors and multisystem resilience in mitigating declines. Those in middle age play a central role in the lives of those who are younger and older at home, in the workplace, and in society at large. Thus, a focus on promoting health and well-being in middle age can have a far-reaching impact.

scholarly journals A Confluence of Policy Inequality: Health Disparities in Old Age Among American Indian and Alaska Native Populations

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 37-37
Author(s):  
Sadie Giles
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Disparities ◽  
Life Course ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Alaska Native ◽  
Political History ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Life Course

Abstract Racial health disparities in old age are well established, and new conceptualizations and methodologies continue to advance our understanding of health inequality across the life course. One group that is overlooked in many of these analyses, however, is the aging American Indian/Native Alaskan (AI/NA) population. While scholars have attended to the unique health inequities faced by the AI/NA population as a whole due to its discordant political history with the US government, little attention has been paid to unique patterns of disparity that might exist in old age. I propose to draw critical gerontology into the conversation in order to establish a framework through which we can uncover barriers to health, both from the political context of the AI/NA people as well as the political history of old age policy in the United States. Health disparities in old age are often described through a cumulative (dis)advantage framework that offers the benefit of appreciating that different groups enter old age with different resources and health statuses as a result of cumulative inequalities across the life course. Adding a framework of age relations, appreciating age as a system of inequality where people also gain or lose access to resources and status upon entering old age offers a path for understanding the intersection of race and old age. This paper will show how policy history for this group in particular as well as old age policy in the United States all create a unique and unequal circumstance for the aging AI/NA population.

scholarly journals A Faith to Move Mountains? Childhood Abuse, Religious Change, and Mental Health at Midlife

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 461-461
Author(s):  
Laura Upenieks
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Childhood Abuse ◽  
Childhood Maltreatment ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Attendance ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Religious Importance ◽  
The Life Course

Abstract Of all the various forms of adversity experienced during childhood, childhood maltreatment (emotional and physical abuse) is shown to have the largest impacts on mental health and well-being. Yet we still have a limited understanding of why some victims of early maltreatment suffer immense mental health consequences later on in the life course, while others are able to cushion the blow of these early insults. Using two waves of data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS), this study considers change in religiosity as a buffer across three dimensions for victims of childhood abuse: religious importance, attendance, and the specific act of seeking comfort through religion. Results suggest that increases in religious comfort during adulthood are positively associated with adult mental health for victims of abuse, while decreases in religious comfort over time were associated with worse mental health. Changes in religious attendance and religious importance were not significant associated with mental health for victims of abuse. Taken together, my results show that the stress-moderating effects of religion for victims of childhood maltreatment are contingent on the stability or increases or decreases in religiosity over the life course, which has been overlooked in previous work.

Self-Related and Other-Related Pathways to Subjective Well-Being in Japan and the United States

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 995-1014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheida Novin ◽  
Ivy F. Tso ◽  
Sara H. Konrath
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Subjective Well Being

Do National Service Programs Improve Subjective Well-Being in Communities?

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristopher Velasco ◽  
Pamela Paxton ◽  
Robert W. Ressler ◽  
Inbar Weiss ◽  
Lilla Pivnick
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Change Score ◽  
National Service ◽  
Subjective Well Being ◽  
Community Effects ◽  
Service Programs ◽  
Open Question ◽  
New Evidence

Since the creation of Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) in 1964 and AmeriCorps in 1993, a stated goal of national service programs has been to strengthen the overall health of communities across the United States. But whether national service programs have such community effects remains an open question. Using longitudinal cross-lagged panel and change-score models from 2005 to 2013, this study explores whether communities with national service programs exhibit greater subjective well-being. We use novel measures of subjective well-being derived from tweeted expressions of emotions, engagement, and relationships in 1,347 U.S. counties. Results show that national service programs improve subjective well-being primarily by mitigating threats to well-being and communities that exhibit more engagement are better able to attract national service programs. Although limited in size, these persistent effects are robust to multiple threats to inference and provide important new evidence on how national service improves communities in the United States.

scholarly journals Individual-Level Determinants of Employee Shirking

2005 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 468-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy A. Judge ◽  
Timothy D. Chandler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Job Satisfaction ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Work Group ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Subjective Well Being ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Organization Level

Employee shirking, where workers give less than full effort on the job, has typically been investigated as a construct subject to organization-level influences. Neglected are individual differences that could explain why employees in the same organization or work-group might shirk. Using a sample of workers from the health care profession in the United States, the present study sought to address these limitations by investigating subjective well-being (a dispositional construct), job satisfaction, as well as other indiuidual-level determinants of shirking. Results indicate that whites shirk significantly more than nonwhites, and that subjective well-being, job satisfaction, and age have significant, negative effects on shirking. The implications of these results are discussed.

Education and Health across Lives and Cohorts: A Study of Cumulative (Dis)advantage and Its Rising Importance in Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liliya Leopold ◽  
Thomas Leopold
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Gender Differences ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contextual Influences ◽  
Self Rated Health ◽  
Education And Health ◽  
Health Trajectories ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Educational Gaps

Research from the United States has supported two hypotheses. First, educational gaps in health widen with age—the cumulative (dis)advantage hypothesis. Second, this relationship has intensified across cohorts—the rising importance hypothesis. In this article, we used 23 waves of panel data (Socio-Economic Panel Study, 1992–2014) to examine both hypotheses in the German context. We considered individual and contextual influences on the association between education and health, and we assessed gender differences in health trajectories over the life course (ages 23 to 84) and across cohorts (born between 1930 and 1969). For women, we found no support for either hypothesis, as educational gaps in self-rated health remained stable with age and across cohorts. Among men, we found support for both hypotheses, as educational gaps in self-rated health widened with age and increasingly in newer cohorts.

scholarly journals The Psychological Consequences of Disability over the Life Course: Assessing the Mediating Role of Perceived Interpersonal Discrimination

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-207
Author(s):  
Eun Ha Namkung ◽  
Deborah Carr
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Perceived Discrimination ◽  
Life Stage ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Psychological Consequences ◽  
Mediation Analyses ◽  
Interpersonal Discrimination ◽  
The Life Course

We examine whether perceived interpersonal discrimination mediates the association between disability and psychological well-being (depression, negative and positive affect) and how these processes differ across the life course. Data are from two waves (2004–2006; 2013–2014) of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS; N = 2,503). Perceived discrimination accounts for 5% to 8% of the association between disability and the three mental health outcomes. Moderated mediation analyses reveal significant age differences; perceived discrimination is a stronger explanatory mechanism among midlife (ages 40–64) relative to older (age 65+) adults. Disability stigma takes a heightened psychological toll at midlife, a life stage when adults are expected to be able-bodied and interact with a diverse social network, which may be a source of interpersonal mistreatment. Among older adults, for whom impairment is expected and common, the psychological impact of disability may operate through other pathways. We discuss implications for research and practice.

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