Satisfaction with social contacts and daily activities of older Europeans

This paper analyses the determinants of two important components of well-being among individuals aged 65 years or older in eleven European countries: satisfaction with daily activities and satisfaction with social contacts. For this purpose we use datafrom the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and anchoring vignettes to correct for potential differences in responses scales across countries and sociodemographic groups. On average, older Europeans report being satisfied with their daily activities and with their social contacts, but there exist some differences across countries: respondents from Northern countries tend to be more satisfied than individuals from Central or Mediterranean countries. Our analysis shows that correcting for response scale differentials alters the country ranking for both domains of satisfaction while it has much less effect on the estimates of what drives withincountry differences between socio-demographic groups.