Using survey data from 2002 to 2018, the authors estimated partial-cohort happy life expectancy for pairs of birth cohorts born ten years apart, applying a multistate life table to transitions between happy and unhappy states. Later cohorts gained absolute years lived happy while total life expectancy stayed broadly flat, which the authors describe as a compression of unhappiness. Gains were larger for women, who reversed an initial disadvantage, and larger for urban and formally educated respondents, widening the socioeconomic gap in happy years.
Why it is interesting: It applies the compression framework to subjective wellbeing on a cohort basis, and finds the gradient widening as the average improves.