Abstract
In contrast to the common finding that life satisfaction is U-shaped with age, recent studies for Japan found an L-shaped pattern of life satisfaction, with initial decline between young and middle ages, but no recovery in the old age. We studied the source of this unusual finding by two versions of age-cohort-period model, and found that the addition of cohort effects basically explains away the L-shaped pattern in the life cycle of happiness. The result remained robust to adding fixed effects across individuals, with several significant asymmetries between men and women in determinants of life satisfaction.
