Does Misery Love Company? Multilevel Relationships between Perceived Age Discrimination and Happiness among Older Europeans

Jong Hyun Jung, Harris Hyun soo Kim

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

The present study examines how contextual age discrimination moderates the individual-level association between perceived age discrimination and happiness among older Europeans. In this endeavor, we test two opposing views: 1) the “social norm” hypothesis that predicts the association between perceived age discrimination and happiness to become weaker in areas with a higher average level of age discrimination; and 2) conversely the “contagion effect” hypothesis that predicts the association to grow stronger in such areas. Using data from the European Social Survey (2008), we estimate two- and three-level mixed effects models to test these opposing hypotheses. Our findings from multilevel analysis lend support to the social norm hypothesis. Specifically, the negative link between perceived age discrimination and happiness is weaker in subnational regions where the proportion of victims of age discrimination is higher.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1234-1244
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Applied Gerontology
Volume42
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023.

Keywords

  • European social survey
  • age discrimination
  • contextual analysis
  • cross-level interaction
  • happiness

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