With populations around the world aging rapidly, understanding the key factors contributing to well-being in later life has emerged as a major policy and research challenge. This paper redirects attention towards the cultural aspects of aging, examining how informal institutions -including societal values, intergenerational support norms, trust, and religiosity- affect the subjective well-being of individuals aged 65+ in multiple countries and periods. Using all waves of the World Values Survey (1981–2022), we build an unbalanced panel dataset that includes data on over 80 countries. We concentrate on dependent variables including life satisfaction, perceived happiness, and self-reported health, and analyze how these are influenced by cross-national and cross-time variations in core independent variables that include generalized trust, beliefs about responsibility for taking care of elders, religious participation, and value orientations (e.g., collectivism and individualism). The methodological approach relies on panel data analysis using fixed effects and random effects models to control for within-country changes over time and between-country cultural differences. The findings show that old age subjective well-being is not only a consequence of economic conditions or healthcare systems, but is deeply rooted in the cultural structure of each country.