Is job satisfaction strongUstrong-shaped in age - Andrew Oswald.pdf

Journal of Occupat-ional and Organtzat-ional Psychology {V)9G),(^, 57-8 1 Printed in Great Britain 5 7 © 1996 The British Psychological Society Is job satisfaction U-shaped in age? Andrew Clark* CEPREMAP, Paris, and DELTA, Paris Andrew Oswald ESRC Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics Peter Warr Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK It is generally believed that job satisfaction increases linearly with age . However, there are persuasive arguments , and some empirical evidence, that the relationship is U - shaped, declining from a moderate level in the early years of employment and then increasing steadily up to retirement . Thi s paper investigates that relationship , using sur- vey responses from a large sample of British employees . For overall job satisfaction, sat- isfaction with pay, and satisfaction with the work itself, a strongly significant U-shape is observed . Ordered probit techniques , which take account of the ordinality of satisfac- tion data , are used to analyse the relationship between these forms of satisfaction and a large set of individual and job characteristics . Despite the inclusion of 80 control vari- ables, significant coefficients persist for the age and age-squared variables (the latter rep- resenting the non-linear