The relative happiness of older people: a social analysis of the 2024 world happiness study

Although the happiness and life satisfaction of older people has been the subject of extensive enquiries in social gerontology, it is only recently that research has focused on happiness as a key societal indicator. The present study adopts this latter ‘economics of happiness’ approach to explore the value of treating the relative happiness of a country’s older population as a social indicator in its own right. The analysis used economic, health, political and (demographic) household data from the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Health Organization as predictor variables and an indicator of relative mean happiness of the older population derived from ratings of over 140 countries in the world happiness study as the main variable of interest. A distinct pattern of association was identified that suggests that structural factors shaping national levels of happiness overlap with but can be distinguished from factors that account for variation in the societal subjective happiness of older people. One implication of this study is that policies designed to improve society’s overall well-being do not necessarily benefit the older population, while policies designed to improve the well-being of a country’s older population may not in turn have an overall benefit to society.