Life Satisfaction Sixty Years after World War II: the Lasting Impact of War Across Generations

Each year, wars disrupt the lives of thousands of people around the globe. Yet, we still know relatively little about the long-term consequences of war for individual satisfaction with life, in particular across generations. In this study, we analyze how war experience influences life satisfaction sixty years after the Second World War with the help of individual survey-data from thirty-four countries (N = 25,618) from 2010. Drawing from related literatures exploring the long-term impact of traumatic experiences, we not only examine how such experiences influence individual levels of life satisfaction among those directly affected by the war, but also its impact on their descendants’ level of life satisfaction. Our findings indicate that war experiences continue to be related to lower levels of life satisfaction even six decades after the end of the war, both among members of the war generation and subsequent generations. This effect is remarkably robust and extends to individuals born decades after the war as well as increases in magnitude with age.