Key messages
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Major advances in the measurement and interpretation of subjective wellbeing have been made
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Three measures—life evaluation, hedonic experience, and meaningfulness—represent different aspects of life experience and have distinct associated factors
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In high-income English-speaking countries, life evaluation dips in middle age, and rises in old age, but this U-shape pattern does not hold in three other regions (countries of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean) where life evaluation decreases with age
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Outside high-income English-speaking countries, worry, lack of happiness, and physical pain rise with age, whereas anger and stress decrease
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In the former Soviet Union and eastern European countries, elderly people are particularly disadvantaged relative to young people, in terms of lower life evaluation and high levels of worry, low happiness, and physical pain
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A two-way relation between physical health and subjective wellbeing exists; poor health leads to reduced subjective wellbeing, while high wellbeing can reduce physical health impairments
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Evidence shows that subjective wellbeing is associated with longer survival