Abstract

This is a response to a recently published comment by David G. Blanchflower (2020a) regarding the earlier paper entitled “Experienced Life Cycle Satisfaction in Europe” (Morgan and O’Connor, 2017), hereafter MO. Blanchflower critiques MO, obtaining a distinct pattern of life satisfaction over the life cycle using a different sample. We take this distinction as further supporting the main conclusion in MO, that more rigor should be applied in assessing the relation between life satisfaction and age, especially in choosing controls and by using non-parametric methods. Our response speaks to the broader literature. Many previous studies limit the number of possible shapes by imposing a quadratic relation, or describe the relation in quadratic terms. MO describes the pattern between life satisfaction and age in more detail and offers evidence, immune to Blanchflower’s critique, that the U-shape relation is in fact not everywhere.