Are older people happier than younger peopleand#65046; a psychological inquiry

Abstract

Studies on happiness and well-being indicate that there are three trends of relationships between age and happiness i.e. U-curve, inverted U-curve and linear relationship. The present study aims to examine happiness across three age groups to study the afore mentioned three trends of relationship in the Indian context, by studying happiness across three age groups, namely late adolescents, young adults and elderly, and further examine the significant difference on happiness across age groups after controlling psychosocial variables of self-esteem, stress, personality dimensions, life satisfaction, and social relationship. Gender differences of happiness were explored in addition to examining the relationship between happiness and socio-demographic variables, and the effect of selected socio-demographic variables on happiness was also determined. Quantitative research with cross-sectional study design was used for this study and data was collected using random sampling method. Oxford happiness questionnaire and subjective happiness scale-revised were used as measurement tools to examine happiness. Results showed that there is significant difference on happiness across the three age groups on both happiness measures; elderly age group reported highest happiness score than young adults and late adolescents, young adults reported higher happiness than late adolescents. Thereby confirming that older people are happier than younger people, which is in support of linear relationship between age and happiness. Pearson s product moment correlation revealed that happiness was significantly and positively associated with self-esteem, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, life-satisfaction, social relationship, but significantly and negatively associated with stress and neuroticism. On further analysis, it was found that happiness across the three age groups remains significant after controlling self-esteem, stress, personality dimensions of openness to experience, conscientiousness,