Life course pathways to later life wellbeing

Bram Vanhoutte, James Nazroo & Alan MarshallCCSR, University of Manchester

Epicurus/AristippusAristotle

Subjective well-being

• Roots in Epicurus, Bentham, Mill-Well-being is maximalisation of pleasure, minimalisation of suffering

Eudaimonic

• Roots in Aristotle:- Well-being is about developing one-self and realising one’s potential (Maslow 1968; Erikson 1959)

Hedonic(cognitive+affective)

Life course models

• Critical period model – Influences at a specific point in time (often early

life) have a life lasting influence• Accumulation model– The accumulation of advantage/ disadvantage

across the life course is most relevant • Social Mobility– What are the consequences of rising and falling on

the social ladder?

Accumulation model

• The accumulation of advantage/ disadvantage across the life course is most relevant

• Accumulation through environmental, behavioural and psychosocial processes

• Examples:– Matthew effect (Merton 1968)– Habitus (Bourdieu 1984)– Allostatic load (McEwen & Stellar 1993)

Life course models

• Plenty of supportive evidence for accumulation model for Mortality and Physical Health/Illness (Case & Paxson 2011, Pollitt, Rose & Kaufman 2005, Kuh & Schlomo 2004, and many more)

• No investigation of Subjective Well-being and limited research on Psychological health (exceptions: Luo & Waite 2005, Haas 2008, both using HRS)

Research questions

• Do trajectories of wellbeing in later life differ according to accumulative socio-economic profiles?

• Divergence or convergence of wellbeing in later life (Dannefer 1988 , House, Kessler, Herzog et al.

1990) ?

Data

• English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA)– 5 Waves (2002-2010)– Wave 1 :11000 participants aged 50+– Wave 5: 6200 core participants– Refresher + Booster samples

• Available at ukds.co.uk

Affective, Cognitive and Eudaimonic Wellbeing

Depressive Symptoms (CES-D)

(Radloff, 1977)

-Felt depressed- Was happy- Could not get

going- Enjoyed life- ...

Yes/No

Score from 0-8

Satisfaction With Life Scale

(Diener, 1984)

-In most ways my life is close to ideal-The conditions of my life are excellent-...

Strongly agree to Strongly disagree (7 categories)

Score from 5-35

CASP15(Hyde et al, 2003)

Control/Autonomy- I feel that what

happens to me is out of control

Pleasure-I enjoy the things that I do

Self-Actualisation-I choose to do things that I have never done before

Often/Sometimes/Not often/Never

Score from 4-45

Life course trajectories

– Occupation of Parent (age 14) – Educational level (age 20)– Current/last occupation (age 50)

Accumulation ?• Restructure life course by advantaged/

disadvantaged social positions– Lowest exposure • 000 = Parent Managerial / Professional Class +High level

of education + Self in Managerial/Professional Class

– Highest exposure • 222 = Parent Routine and Manual Class + Low level of

education + Self Routine and Manual Class

> assumes difference between two classes is equivalent + same value for each point in time

Some descriptives

• Most common trajectories:– 222: always in the lowest category (23%) – 221: low background, but middle class job (7%)– 000: always in the highest category (6%)

• A lot of missing info on parental occupations (other jobs/something else = 21%)

• Recoded to three categories of similar size

Growth curve models• Ideally suited to describe change at the

personal level

• Intercept (cross-sectional difference at W1) and slope (longitudinal evolution)

• Age-vector model: growth model based illustration of how a cohort (5y) changes over time

• Assumes Missing at Random(MAR)…

1 2 3 4 51

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

MAR Selection Shared parameter

Dealing with Attrition

• Selective drop-out :– Related to outcome/trajectory? – Related to differential mortality? – Related to unobserved factor influencing both(eg.

physical health)

• Use selection model (Diggle & Kenwood) and shared parameter model (Wu & Carrol) to compare findings

Affective wellbeing men

52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 88 90 92 940

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

Cognitive wellbeing men

54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 88 90 92 940

5

10

15

20

25

30

Eudaimonic well-being men

52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 88 90 92 940

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Conclusions

• The life course accumulation has an effect on later life trajectories of well-being

• Strong diverging tendencies across cognitive, affective and eudaimonic aspects of wellbeing in third age

• Leveling off or converging in fourth age