Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation and Ukraine. A more exhaustive analysis followed, including the life-cycle factors most associated with life satisfaction in the first stage. This second analysis sought to identify interactions between life-cycle factors and living conditions because, for example, the effects of age on life satisfaction might not be the same at different levels of monetary income. The U-shaped pattern described in the literature (showing higher levels of satisfaction at younger ages and in older adults) is seen in the Nordic countries and does not strictly hold for continental Europe or the Anglo-Saxon countries, because the youngest are less likely to be satisfied than older persons are.