The Relationship Between Age and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Five Capital Cities in Mainland China

• Published in: Social indicators research Vol. 117; no. 3; pp. 743 - 756
• Main Authors: Xing, Zhanjun, Huang, Liqing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.07.2014; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: 20th century; Age; Age groups; Aged; Capital cities; China; Cities; Correlation analysis; Demography; Happiness; Housing; Human Geography; Life Satisfaction; Marital Status; Microeconomics; Middle schools; Multiple Regression Analysis; Peoples Republic of China; Predominantly White Institutions; Psychometrics; Public Health; Quality of Life Research; Quantitative psychology; Questionnaires; Regression analysis; Researcher Subject Relations; Researchers; Rooms; Social indicators; Social research; Social Sciences; Socioeconomics; Sociology; Standard of living; Studies; Subjectivity; Twentieth Century; Urban Areas; Well Being; Wellbeing; China; Subjective well-being; Mainland China; Age; Personal well-being
• ISSN: 0303-8300; 1573-0921
• DOI: 10.1007/s11205-013-0396-6

Since the mid-60s of the twentieth-century, the researchers have made lots of studies on the relationship between age and subjective well-being (SWB), and yielded some contradictory conclusions. By using an urban sample (N = 3,099) from five capital cities in Mainland China, this paper presents some new evidence on this issue in the Chinese context. The paper reconfirms a significant relationship between age and subjective well-being, and argues that different measure instruments of subjective well-being lead to different types of relationship. It is partly testified that subjective well-being follows approximate U-shape across age groups, and the minimum point lies in the age band 45–49. It is also found that age is not always a strong significant predictor of subjective well-being when a different dependent variable was adopted to multiple regression analysis. It is suggested that the researchers should pay more attention to the specific content of subjective well-being while examining the relationship between age and subjective well-being.