Happiness at Older Agescognitive capacity. The latter is assessed by aggregating re-
sponses on a series of cognitive tests of memory, verbal flu-
ency, attention, and processing speed. All these measures
were taken in 2010 in order to avoid direct contamination
of the life- satisfaction ratings obtained in 2012. It turns
out that mental well- being is a powerful correlate of life-
satisfaction at older ages (Figure 9.2, bottom panel), with
a large negative association between depressive symptoms
and life- satisfaction, and greater satisfaction among individ-
uals who have a stronger sense of control over their lives.
Overall, the four sets of factors combined explain a sub-
stantial part (33%) of the variability in life- satisfaction in
this sample of English older adults. The largest associations
are for mental well- being and social relationships and en-
gagement. What these findings indicate is that targeting ef-
forts at improving mental well- being and increasing social
connectedness and social support may provide the best re-
turns in relation to gains in life- satisfaction. We also provide
an indication of the absolute size of effects by presenting
the unstandardized coefficients on a 0– 10 point scale in
Table 9.1. It can be seen, for instance, that an increase of 1
unit on the loneliness scale is associated with a decrease of
0.49 points on the life- satisfaction 0– 10 scale.
Age Differences
These results were obtained from all participants in the study
right across the age spectrum. But it is possible that some
of these factors become more important as people move
from late middle age to older ages. We therefore repeated
the analyses after dividing the sample into those aged 54– 64
years (N = 2,028), and 65 years and older (N = 3,385), and