Aging, Values, and Rewards: Explaining Age Differences in Job Satisfaction

The study of age differences in job satisfaction is a usefulfocus for investigating the interplay among work, self, and family concepts as they produce changes in role outcomes during the life course. Using data from the 1972-73 Quality of Employment Survey as well as other data sets, we find that age is positively related to job satisfaction. A relatively substantial portion of these differences are explained by age variations in work values and job rewards. These findings are consistent with both cohort and job change explanations of age differences in job satisfaction. However, some of these age inequalities are not explicable on the basis of the variables in our model. Though some unknown portion of these age differences are undoubtedly due to compositional effects, we argue that they also partly reflect more general processes of aging and development.