The twentieth century has seen the proportion of individuals that live to old age rise dramatically, close to 50 percent of the population now reach the age of 75 (Baltes and Graf, 1996). This rise has meant that individuals who live to old age are no longer considered exceptional, they are now in fact the norm (Baltes and Graf, 1996). Recently, much research has gone into studying aging, and because risks for functional disabilities rise with age, researchers are particularly interested in successful aging.
.
A major problem in studying successful aging is that the concept can be defined in a number of ways. One particular definition is that successful aging refers to the extent to which individuals are happy or satisfied with their own lives (Bee, 2000). A number of approaches have attempted to measure the concept of successful aging, such as measures of happiness, well-being and life satisfaction (Diener, 1984, cited in Bee, 2000). A popular approach is the scale constructed by Bradburn (1969), which takes into account both positive and negative feelings (cited in Bee, 2000). The negative feelings include emotions such as loneliness, depression, boredom, restlessness, or being upset with criticism and the positive emotions include feeling on top of the world, excited or interested in something, pleased with accomplishment and pride (Bradburn, 1969, cited in Bee, 2000). Summed together, the positive and negative emotions produce "affect balance" (Bradburn, 1969, cited in Bee, 2000).
It appears that age has a very little systematic relationship to the level of reported well-being (Bee, 2000). A nine-year longitudinal study conducted on nearly 5000 adults aged between 25 and 65 found that age groups did not differ in average level of satisfaction, and there was no significant change in satisfaction with age (Costa, Zonderman, McCrae, Cornoni-Huntley, Locke & Barbano, 1987).
