Subjective well-being among male veterans in later life: the enduring effects of early life adversity

Abstract

Objectives

This study investigated the association between childhood and young adult adversities and later-life subjective well-being among older male veterans. We also explored whether early-life parent–child relationships and later-life social engagement served as moderators and mediators, respectively.

Methods

Data were from the 2008 to 2012 waves of the Health and Retirement Study for male veterans (N = 2026). Subjective well-being measures included depressive symptoms, self-rated health, and life satisfaction. Linear regression with the Process macro was employed to estimate the relationships.

Results

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) were positively associated with number of depressive symptoms and negatively related to life satisfaction. Combat exposure, a young adulthood adversity experience, was positively associated with depressive symptoms, but not with self-rated health or life satisfaction. Later-life social engagement mediated the relationship between ACEs and subjective well-being indices. Parent–child relationship quality did not moderate the association between the measures of adversity and any measure of subjective well-being.

Discussion

Childhood adversity and combat exposure were related to worse later life subjective well-being. Also, later-life social engagement mediated the association of two early life adversity measures and subjective well-being. Future research should examine subjective well-being and early life adversity for female veterans and should employ more detailed information about combat exposure.

KEYWORDS:

• Depression
• life satisfaction
• self-rated health
• military service
• adversity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.