RICHARD A . EASTERLIN Happiness of Women and Men in Later Life : Nature , Determinants , and Prospects

As they move into and through the retirement years women’s advantage over men in happiness is reversed. Although the happiness of both sexes is affected similarly by retirement from work, marital disruption, and changes in income and health, the difference between men and women in the life cycle occurrence of retirement and widowhood results in different trends in happiness. Men who survive to older age benefit disproportionately from the positive effect on happiness of retirement, while women suffer disproportionately from the adverse effect of widowhood. For women and men in the same work and marital circumstances, women continue to be happier than men. In the future, the turnaround in the relative happiness of women and men in later life is likely to continue, but the shift will be somewhat smaller in magnitude. Who are happier, women or men? Does the gender difference, if any, vary over the life cycle? The answers to these questions are a puzzle. A survey by Argyle (1987) concludes that there is little gender difference in satisfaction with life as a whole. A more recent review leads Mrocek and Kolarz (1998) to the view that “women appear to be less happy, and this seems to persist across all age groups” (p. 1336). In contrast, Nolen-Hoeksema and Rusting (1999) report that “a number of studies have found that women report experiencing greater happiness and more intense positive emotions than men” (p. 333). Recent statistical analyses by economists of large data sets for the United States, United Kingdom, and a number of continental European nations also find that women are happier (Blanchflower and Oswald, 2001; DiTella, MacCulloch, and Oswald, 2001; Oswald, 1997). The mixed results in the literature arise from several sources. Generalizations are not always based on a nationally representative sample. Also, the possibility is seldom considered that the gender differential might differ at various points in the life cycle. Of the studies cited above, Mrocez and Kolarz are the exception. In addition, a clear distinction is not always made between the simple bivariate gender differential and the gender differential when circumstances such as marital and work status are held constant. Another possible source of conflicting results is the use of point-of-time associations with age to infer change over the life cycle. If, for example, older persons are found to be happier than younger in the year 1990, it is sometimes inferred that happiness tends to increase over the life cycle. But those ages 65 to 74 in 1990 were born in the period 1916-25; those ages 25 to 34, in 1956-65. Clearly the two age groups have quite different histories. To line up these and the intervening age groups to infer life cycle change is to jumble together people that are different in many ways (cf. also George, 1992).1 In this study I compare the happiness of women and men with and without controls for various circumstances, as they age from their fifties onward. I use a nationally representative data set, the General Social Survey (GSS) and the demographers’ technique of cohort analysis, sometimes called a “synthetic panel,” to follow essentially the same people as they age. A previous paper using this technique found that for both sexes taken together, happiness remains essentially constant over the life course (Easterlin and Schaeffer, 1999; see also Easterlin 2001). Here, I find that, despite this 1 Mrocek and Kolarz are characteristically careful on this point, saying “that we could not tell from these cross-sectional data whether there was an aging or cohort effect” (ibid., p. 1338).