Schilling Oliver Karl
German Centre for Research on Ageing at the University of Heidelberg, Bergheimer Str. 20, 69115 Heidelberg, Germany.
Eur J Ageing. 2005 Dec 6;2(4):254-263. doi: 10.1007/s10433-005-0016-7. eCollection 2005 Dec.
Absence of age-related decline in elder's life satisfaction (LS), found in several studies from the last quarter of the twentieth century, has been labelled a "paradox", as it contrasts with increasing psycho-social and health risks in old age. To explain these findings, the present study was based on the hypothesis of a cohort effect on the LS of those born in the first half of the twentieth century, which might have overlayed and thus obscured the age-related decline in cross-sectional studies. In addition, it was hypothesized that the age-related decline in LS accelerates over the old age period such that the "paradox" would not hold for old-old subjects. Longitudinal analysis was conducted by means of multilevel mixed models, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Analyzing single-item measures of LS from 16 panel waves (1984-1999), the findings confirm both hypotheses. For the young-old, cohort- and age-related decline was found with about equal decrements in LS per year of birth or age, neutralizing age-group differences in cross-sectional comparisons. For the old-old, the age-related decline appeared accelerated, outnumbering the cohort effect.
20世纪最后25年的几项研究发现，老年人的生活满意度（LS）不存在与年龄相关的下降，这一现象被称为“悖论”，因为它与老年人日益增加的心理社会和健康风险形成了对比。为了解释这些发现，本研究基于这样一种假设，即对20世纪上半叶出生的人的生活满意度存在队列效应，这种效应可能掩盖了横断面研究中与年龄相关的下降。此外，研究假设生活满意度与年龄相关的下降在老年期会加速，因此“悖论”不适用于高龄老人。使用来自德国社会经济面板的数据，通过多层次混合模型进行纵向分析。分析16个面板波（1984 - 1999年）中生活满意度的单项测量结果，研究结果证实了这两个假设。对于年轻老人，发现了队列效应和与年龄相关的下降，出生年份或年龄每增加一年，生活满意度的下降幅度大致相同，从而消除了横断面比较中的年龄组差异。对于高龄老人，与年龄相关的下降似乎加速了，超过了队列效应。
