Lonely in a Crowd: Cohort Size and Happiness in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Studies have shown that happiness level varies significantly across birth cohorts and baby boomers are the unhappiest of all birth cohorts. Yet, we don’t know if this is due to their large cohort size negatively affecting happiness. We question whether people born in high fertility times are unhappy because they suffer more from economic setbacks and/or social strains. Using 9 waves of data from the European Social Survey United Kingdom Subset 2002–2018 (N = 19,364) and hierarchical age-period-cohort cross-classified models, we analyze the effects of cohort size, socioeconomic status, marital status, and sociality on happiness. Cohort size, marital status, and sociality are the top three factors of cohort difference in happiness, but socioeconomic status is not. Cohort size is negatively associated with happiness. Income, education, or employment are not the source of unhappiness among the Boomers. Besides being members of a large cohort, the Boomers have two known factors against their odds: they are the most likely to separate and divorce and the least likely to socialize with friends despite having a large number of peers. Social disintegration and deprivation, not economic impoverishment, appears to be the culprit of unhappiness of the UK Baby Boomers.