Sex Differences in Life Satisfaction among the Elderly

Abstract

Sex differences in life satisfaction are a recurrent research issue in the field of social gerontology. However, the evidence concerning the effect of sex on morale is still inconclusive. This may be due to (a) the neglect of other relevant variables, (b) the failure to distinguish between main effects and interaction effects, and (c) the lack of formal statistical tests in making comparisons. In this study, a causal model of life satisfaction is proposed and evaluated by using four data sets with sample sizes ranging from 961 to 3,996. The proposed structural model fitted both the male and female subsamples reasonably well. The findings were also replicated across these four data sets. No systematic sex difference was found in terms of structural parameters. This indicates that the same causal mechanism is operating among the males as well as the females.