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Answers will vary. To study the life-span development of self-esteem, Richard Robins and his colleagues   recruited more than 300,000 individuals to complete an online questionnaire that provided demographic information (age, gender, ethnic background, and so forth) and measures of self-esteem. Two-thirds of the respondents were from the United States, and 57% were female. Generally, the self-esteem of males was higher than that of females. Self-esteem was high in childhood (likely an inflated estimate) and dipped precipitously with entry into adolescence, a finding that is consistent with studies. Self-esteem then rose gradually throughout middle adulthood and declined in late adulthood, with most of the decline occurring between the ages of 70 and 85. However, this is all relative. Even for people in their 80s, self-esteem levels were above the mid-point of the questionnaire. Researchers suggest a couple of possible reasons for the drop in self-esteem they found among people in their 70s and 80s. The first is that life changes such as retirement, loss of a spouse or partner, lessened social support, declining health, and downward movement in socioeconomic status account for the drop in self-esteem. The other hypothesis is more optimistic, namely that older people are wiser and more content. Erikson and other theorists suggest the possibility that ego transcendence occurs in this stage of life, meaning that people come to accept themselves as they are, "warts and all," and no longer need to inflate their self-esteem. As the years wear on in late adulthood, people express progressively less "body esteem"-that is, pride in the appearance and functioning of their bodies. There is also a gender difference, with older men expressing less body esteem than older women do.

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