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Ageing, Health and Life Satisfaction of the Oldest Old: An Analysis for Germany

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Abstract

This analysis uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe to assess the effect of ageing and health on the life satisfaction of the oldest old (defined as 75 and older). We observe a U-shaped relationship between age and levels of life satisfaction for individuals aged between 16 and 65. Thereafter, life satisfaction declines rapidly and the lowest absolute levels of life satisfaction are recorded for the oldest old. This decline is primarily attributable to low levels of perceived health. Once cohort effects are also controlled for, life satisfaction remains relatively constant across the lifespan.

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Notes

  1. Even though several definitions exist for the “oldest old” or “fourth age”, this paper adheres to a population-based definition of the most elderly in which the transition between the third and fourth age is defined as the chronological age at which 50% of the birth cohort are no longer alive. In developed countries, this transition takes place at around 75 years of age (Baltes and Smith 2003).

  2. This section reviews some recent research on the relationship between health and life satisfaction: older studies include Markides and Martin (1979), Kushman and Lane (1980), Usui et al. (1985), and Waters et al. (1989).

  3. Detailed information can be found in Haisken-DeNew and Frick (2005).

  4. We do not use the waves before 1994 because in 1993, as well as in 1991 and earlier, one of the most important variables in our analyses, the self-rated current health status, was not included in the dataset. Likewise, before 1992, other important information was also unavailable; for example, number of doctor visits or whether the individual needed help coping with daily activities. Thus, we excluded these years.

  5. With regards to reliability estimates of the GSOEP satisfaction item, see Landua (1993), Schräpler (1995) and Schilling (2003).

  6. Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters (2004) show that life satisfaction, despite its ordinal character, can be inserted as if cardinally scaled.

  7. Further information, including the regional and time dummies, is provided in Appendix Table 6.

  8. According to Jürges (2007), Germans largely underrate their true health status.

  9. In accordance with previous datasets, we recode life satisfaction and the self-rated health variables in reverse order, meaning that the highest value on the scale is always the most positive response option.

  10. Even when we exclude the elderly and replicate Clark’s analysis, the U-shape vanishes.

  11. We also examine the curve progression of life satisfaction due to cohort effects (Appendix Fig. 2) by calculating the mean fixed-effects by birth year. The difference between the cross-sectional age or cohort effect and the pure age effect of the panel analysis (Fig. 1) is in line with the cohort effects. The birth cohorts from ~1930 to 1965 report lower levels of life satisfaction than older or younger cohorts, which results in a U-shape for the cohort effect. This result matches those for the age groups from 25 to 65 years (Fig. 1), in which the cross-section age/cohort effect is below the longitudinal age effect. Put simply, people born in 1965 and after are fundamentally more satisfied with their lives. The same applies for individuals born before 1930. Examination of the cohort effects by gender shows that, interestingly, there is almost no cohort effect for women in old age. That is, for women born before 1930, the dispersion is quite high, the standard errors are large and all values are around zero. The profile for men is somewhat different: despite high dispersion, there is a distinct tendency for higher life satisfaction to be related to birth year.

  12. Although there does appear to be a decline in life satisfaction among the oldest of the oldest old (i.e. individuals older than 85), the sample size in this group is too small for any significant conclusion to be drawn.

  13. We also note a decline of self-rated health with a deteriorating health status. Likewise, with age, housework, dressing alone or getting in and out of bed become progressively more difficult. Nevertheless, interestingly, there is no age-related change with respect to the more objective health measures like annual doctor visits or overnight hospital stays.

  14. We are also able to show that controlling for unobservable characteristics substantially reduces health’s effect on life satisfaction. Thus, although the results in Table 4 correspond well to the vast cross-sectional research conducted in gerontology and related fields, we show that failing to control for unobservable individual heterogeneity substantially inflates the effect of perceived health on life satisfaction among this population.

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Acknowledgements

The data used in this publication were made available by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Berlin, and through release 2 of SHARE 2004. The SHARE data collection was funded primarily by the European Commission through the fifth framework programme. Additional funding came from the U.S. National Institute on Ageing. Further support by the European Commission through the sixth framework program is gratefully acknowledged. For methodological details, see Börsch-Supan and Jürges (2005). This paper has been presented at the 8th International Socio-Economic Panel User Conference in Berlin (July 9–11, 2008), XXII Annual Conference of the European Society for Population Economics in London (June 19–21, 2008) and at the Spring Conference of the DGH in Muenster (April 3–6, 2008). The authors would like to thank the participants of these conferences as well as David Bell, Rainer Hufnagel, Andrew Oswald, Yu Zhu and Justina Fischer for valuable comments and discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, Copenhagen Business School, Porcelænshaven 16C, 2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Wencke Gwozdz

  2. Department of Household and Consumer Economics, University of Hohenheim, Fruhwirtstr. 48, 70599, Stuttgart, Germany

    Alfonso Sousa-Poza

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  1. Wencke Gwozdz
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  2. Alfonso Sousa-Poza
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Correspondence to Alfonso Sousa-Poza.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 5, 6, 7

Table 5 GSOEP—descriptive statistics for all respondents
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Table 6 GSOEP—descriptive statistics of the oldest old
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Table 7 SHARE—descriptive statistics of all respondents
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and Fig. 2.

Fig. 2
figure 2

GSOEP—life satisfaction: fixed effects by birth year

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Gwozdz, W., Sousa-Poza, A. Ageing, Health and Life Satisfaction of the Oldest Old: An Analysis for Germany. Soc Indic Res 97, 397–417 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-009-9508-8

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