Bidirectional associations between meaning in life and the health, emotional ill-being and daily life functioning outcomes among older adults

Abstract

Objective

Meaning and purpose in life are recognised health determinants. Evidence on the factors contributing to the experience of meaning and purpose in life is limited. The bidirectional associations between the experience of meaning in life and physical health, emotional ill-being and daily life functioning from a 6-year perspective are examined.

Methods and Measures

Longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) were analysed using generalised estimating equations. The sample included 16,361 middle-aged and older adults from 13 countries.

Results

Living a meaningful life was found to be associated with subsequent reduced risks of depression, loneliness, limitations in activities of daily living, and heart attack (at the 6-year follow-up). It was also found that prior experience of depression, loneliness and limited activities of daily living were associated with subsequent reduced sense of meaningful life. These associations were independent of demographics, socioeconomic status, personality, prior history of diseases and lifestyle. The sensitivity analyses provided evidence for the robustness of these associations.

Conclusions

Evidence for health practitioners and policymakers on factors that may hamper the development and maintenance of meaningful life as well as on the role of sense of meaning in life for healthy aging was presented.

Keywords:

• Meaning in life
• daily life functioning
• physical health outcomes
• emotional ill-being
• SHARE

Author contributions

DWB contributed to the study concept, study design, data analysis and interpretation of the result; she also drafted and revised the manuscript and approved its final version. PB contributed with data treatment, provided critical revisions and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Ethical standards

The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.

The SHARE study is subject to continuous ethics review. During Waves 1 to 4, SHARE was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Mannheim. Wave 4 of SHARE and the continuation of the project were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Council of the Max Planck Society (http://www.share-project.org/fileadmin/pdf_documentation/ SHARE_ethics_approvals.pdf). The SHARE website (http://www.share-project.org/data-documentation.html) provides the documentation of the study and access to the datasets including information that all participants provided informed consent to participate in the research.

Data availability statement

This paper uses data from SHARE Waves 4, 5, 7 and 8 (DOIs: 10.6103/SHARE.w4.710, 10.6103/SHARE.w5.710, 10.6103/SHARE.w7.710, 10.6103/SHARE.w8.710), see Börsch-Supan et al. (2013) for methodological details. These data are publicly available for a research purpose. The SHARE website (http://www.share-project.org/data-documentation.html) provides documentation of the study and access to the datasets.

The SHARE data collection has been funded by the European Commission, DG RTD through FP5 (QLK6-CT-2001-00360), FP6 (SHARE-I3: RII-CT-2006-062193, COMPARE: CIT5-CT-2005-028857, SHARELIFE: CIT4-CT-2006-028812), FP7 (SHARE-PREP: GA N°211909, SHARE-LEAP: GA N°227822, SHARE M4: GA N°261982, DASISH: GA N°283646) and Horizon 2020 (SHARE-DEV3: GA N°676536, SHARE-COHESION: GA N°870628, SERISS: GA N°654221, SSHOC: GA N°823782, SHARE-COVID19: GA N°101015924) and by DG Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion through VS 2015/0195, VS 2016/0135, VS 2018/0285, VS 2019/0332, and VS 2020/0313. Additional funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research, the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, the U.S. National Institute on Aging (U01_AG09740-13S2, P01_AG005842, P01_AG08291, P30_AG12815, R21_AG025169, Y1-AG-4553-01, IAG_BSR06-11, OGHA_04-064, HHSN271201300071C, RAG052527A) and from various national funding sources is gratefully acknowledged (see www.share-project.org).

Börsch-Supan, A. (2020). Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) Wave 4. Release version: 7.1.0. SHARE-ERIC. Data set. DOI: 10.6103/SHARE.w4.710

Börsch-Supan, A. (2020). Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) Wave 5. Release version: 7.1.0. SHARE-ERIC. Data set. DOI: 10.6103/SHARE.w5.710

Börsch-Supan, A. (2022). Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) Wave 7. Release version: 8.0.0. SHARE-ERIC. Data set. DOI: 10.6103/SHARE.w7.800

Börsch-Supan, A. (2021). Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) Wave 8. Release version: 1.0.0. SHARE-ERIC. Data set. DOI: 10.6103/SHARE.w8.100

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies (PIASt) of the Polish Academy of Sciences under Grant: “What makes us feel a sense of purpose in life? Looking for determinants of a sense of purpose and meaning in life”. The sponsor had no involvement in study concept, data collection, data analysis and interpretation, writing of the article, and in the decision to submit it for publication.