Well-being paradox: comparing the age-happiness relationship across Japan, China, and the US

Many researchers have discussed the “well-being paradox,” that subjective well-being tends to be stable or even improving in later life despite worsening health and social losses. Using repeated cross-sectional survey data from Japan (2000–2018), China (2003–2021), and the US (2000–2022) and controlling for period and cohort effects, we compared the trajectory of happiness over age across the three countries. We observed U shaped age-happiness curves across the three countries, despite different troughs (at age 58 years in Japan somewhat later than at age 49 years in China and at age 42 years in the US) and curvatures (sharper in Japan and China than in the US). We also examined how and to what extent changes in marital status, job status, and self-rated health affected the impact of age on happiness and found that spousal loss was a dominant intervening factor in all countries. The slope of the U-shaped curve becomes steeper after controlling for these intervening variables in all three countries, confirming the robustness of the well-being paradox.