In the present research, we examined the effects of age, cohort, and time of measurement on well-being across adulthood. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of two independent samples—one with more than 10,000 repeated assessments across 30 years (mean assessments per participant = 4.44, SD = 3.47) and one with nationally representative data—suggested that well-being declines with age. This decline, however, reversed when we controlled for birth cohort. That is, once we accounted for the fact that older cohorts had lower levels of well-being, all cohorts increased in well-being with age relative to their own baseline. Participants tested more recently had higher well-being, but time of measurement, unlike cohort, did not change the shape of the trajectory. Although well-being increased with age for everyone, cohorts that lived through the economic challenges of the early 20th century had lower well-being than those born during more prosperous times.

中文翻译：

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出生队列对幸福感的影响


在本研究中，我们研究了年龄、群体和测量时间对成年期幸福感的影响。对两个独立样本的横断面和纵向分析——一个样本在 30 年间进行了超过 10,000 次重复评估（每个参与者的平均评估 = 4.44，SD = 3.47），另一个样本具有全国代表性数据——表明幸福感随着年龄的增长而下降。然而，当我们控制出生队列时，这种下降趋势出现逆转。也就是说，一旦我们考虑到老年群体的幸福感水平较低这一事实，所有群体的幸福感相对于他们自己的基线都随着年龄的增长而增加。最近测试的参与者有更高的幸福感，但与队列不同，测量时间并没有改变轨迹的形状。尽管每个人的福祉随着年龄的增长而增加，但经历过 20 世纪初期经济挑战的人群的福祉低于出生在繁荣时期的人群。