The Generation Gap: Age and Well-being in New Zealand

Abstract

This paper explores the way subjective well-being varies with age. It is motivated by the relatively high level of suicide among young adults in New Zealand compared to other new settler countries like Australia, Canada and the USA. Since the Second World War age specific suicide rates of the young have increased in many countries while those of the old have fallen. This generational switch in age-specific suicide rates is believed to reflect an underlying shift in the distribution of subjective wellbeing away from the young towards the old. The time series measures of well-being necessary to test such a proposition are unavailable, however we can compare the size of the generation gap in New Zealand to that prevailing in comparable countries. Evidence from two World Values Surveys offers empirical support for the presence of a wider gap in wellbeing between the younger and older age groups in New Zealand