Abstract

Despite the notion of the U-shape of happiness being frequently dealt with in the media, there is a lack of consensus among researchers on the relationship between age and happiness. In this paper we examined whether age and happiness have a U-shaped relationship among South Koreans, shedding light on the two main issues discussed in a recent line of study: control variables and effect size. Using data from the 2019 Korean Labor & Income Panel Study in Study 1 (N = 12,629) and the 2019 National Leisure Activities Survey in Study 2 (N = 10,060), we compared the age-happiness relationship with and without controlling for five sociodemographic variables (gender, household income, education, marital status, and occupational status), also examining the effect size of such relationship. We found in both Study 1 and 2 an inverted U-shape without controlling for variables, whereas a U-shape appeared when adding control variables. The analyses also demonstrate that regardless of control variables, the effect size of the happiness curve is trivial. The current contribution, using two representative data, enhances our understanding of the happiness patterns of Koreans.