The satisfaction and happiness of some senior citizens in rural Ontario

After reviewing recent gerontological literature on satisfaction and happiness from the point of view of explanations by analysis of constituents, explanations by synthesis of correlates and mixtures of these two types of explanations, I described some results of a social survey of rural Ontario seniors. A gap-theoretical account of satisfaction and happiness called ‘the Michigan model’ was supported for 12 domains and life as a whole. Differences in the constituent patterns for satisfaction and happiness with life as a whole were found for males, females, those who had lived off farming, those who had not, those aged 60–74, and 75 and above.