Data collection

The purpose of this study was not to offer a highly comprehensive and systematic overview but to observe the dynamics of the field via the core literature and capture vital research frontiers. We used the Web of Science Core Collection as the literature source database. The search formula has been fine-tuned as follows: TS = “subject* well-being” AND TI = (“old* person” OR “old* people” OR “old* population” OR “old* man” OR “old* woman” OR “old* adult” OR “late* life” OR “very old” OR “fourth age” OR “oldest-old” OR retirement OR elder* OR aging OR geriatric* OR senior*), and literature type was restricted to reviews or articles published from January 1, 2002, to December 31, 2021, in any language. A total of 562 articles were retrieved. To improve the quality of literature data, we screened the literature according to the following exclusion criteria: (1) the research topic was not about the SWB of older adults; (2) the main research object was not the older adult population or involved other groups; (3) non-research literature. Finally, we obtained 354 papers, for which all records and references were exported in plain text format. Data were cleaned, and missing time entries in records were added. In addition, publication time was considered the actual publication time, where the network release time was adjusted (e.g., if the online publication date of an article was 2022, this was adjusted to the actual publication date of 2021).