The U-shape without controls: A response to Glenn

This paper is a continuation of results reported in our article “Is well-being U-shaped over the life cycle?” (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2008). It provides new evidence that well-being follows a curve through life. We use data on half a million randomly sampled individuals across eight major European nations. Importantly, we show that in this set of countries there is a U-shape even in unadjusted data, that is, without the inclusion of control variables. But we also advise against a focus on elementary bivariate associations.