Reallocation of wellbeing across the life course in the OECD between 2008 and 2024

Introduction: Recent evidence from Europe suggests substantial temporal change in the age-wellbeing relationship, with considerable cross-national variation. We examine how wellbeing gains and losses were distributed across age groups in 28 OECD countries between 2008 and 2024. Method: We analyse life evaluation (0–10 scale) data from the Gallup World Poll at four anchor years (2008, 2011, 2019, 2024). We estimate weighted within-country changes in life evaluation across age groups to identify statistically significant reallocation patterns.Results: At the OECD level, gains were only observed in late adulthood. Across countries, we identify five distinct reallocation patterns: (1) broad-based gains (8 countries including Eastern Europe, East Asia, Chile: gains across all age groups); (2) relative early adulthood disadvantage (14 countries across North, Western, and Southern Europe, North America, and New Zealand, where younger generations experienced worse trajectories than older generations through concentrated declines, disproportionate losses, or exclusion from gains; Spain: −1.34 points for ages 18–29, +0.83 for ages 70–79; Canada: broad-based decline with late adulthood experiencing less than half the losses of younger groups); (3) relative elderly disadvantage (United Kingdom, Ireland: elderly experienced worse trajectories); (4) mixed/unique patterns (Australia, Denmark); (5) no significant reallocation (Turkey, Israel).Conclusion: Generational divergence characterised most of the countries studied, with younger generations faring systematically worse, highlighting substantial distributional imbalance. All countries achieving gains across all age groups started from lower wellbeing levels baselines, suggesting that equitable distribution of gains may be more feasible during periods of aggregate improvement than during stagnation or decline. Addressing divergent patterns requires comprehensive policy attention and routine age-disaggregated monitoring of wellbeing outcomes.