A person’s quality of sleep — or perceived of quality of sleep — should improve with age, a new study suggests.

Investigators at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology originally set out to confirm the long-held belief that difficulty sleeping increases with age. But after conducting randomized telephone surveys of 155,877 adults, they found the reverse to be true.

“Even if sleep among older Americans is actually worse than in younger adults, feelings about it still improve with age,” lead author Michael Grandner, Ph.D., said. “Once you factor out things like illness and depression, older people should be reporting better sleep. If they’re not, they need to talk to their doctor. They shouldn’t just ignore it.”

The study was published in the March edition of the journal Sleep.