The National Bureau of Economic Research recently conducted a study on happiness. Among the points that stand out is how anxiety, uncertainty, and negative emotions affect happiness. Researchers argue that from the age of 18 onwards, happiness can be negatively affected, reaching its lowest point at the age of 47. Life expectancy, work, and personal relationships throughout our lives are affected and can undergo major changes. On the other hand, from the age of 70 onwards, mental health tends to move closer to happiness. Read on to learn more about happiness in our lives.
What is happiness?
Happiness is a figurative concept. Nevertheless, science has always tried to find a logical explanation for it. The reasons for our mood are still a real problem, although we are getting closer to some replies. For example, thanks to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, we are aware of what age we go through a happiness slump.
Ironically, maybe the birthday that all young people look forward to for several arguments. Even so, this investigation has come to the end that happiness starts to decrease from the age of 18. This decline keeps until it gets a minimum around the middle of our lives, at age 47. From then on, it starts to pick up again.
These are the peaks of a person’s happiness: at 47 and 70 years of age
The arguments may be that negative emotions, such as anxiety or doubts, tend to magnify over time. According to this investigations, it should also be underline that this process is not random, as it can be thought as a combination of internal elements (aspirations, expectations or self-demand) and external elements (work environment, personal relationships or family changes).
Contrary to popular considerations, it is from the age of 47 onwards that people start to experience peaks of happiness. Profesionals at the National Bureau of Economic Research identify 50, 60 and even 70 years old as the age when we are happy with our lives, which often translates into happiness.
What this study makes clear is that happiness is not a straight line throughout our lives, but has its ups and downs as we grow and experience new sensations. Once we look back, we realize how happy we have been.
Youth does not mean happiness
For more than half a century, the midlife crisis has been a feature of western society. Fast cars, impulsive decisions, and peak misery between the age of 40 and 50. But all that is changing, according to experts. In a new paper commissioned by the UN, the leading academics Jean Twenge and David Blanchflower warn that a burgeoning youth mental health crisis in six English-speaking countries worldwide is upending the traditional pattern of happiness across our lifetimes.
Whereas happiness was once considered to follow a U-shape – with a relatively carefree youth, a tougher middle age and a more comfortable later life – the experts in wellbeing say our satisfaction now rises steadily with age instead. Analysing responses to surveys in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, the study found that life satisfaction and happiness had fallen among young people over the past decade, and particularly among young women.
It highlighted the rise of smartphones and social media, suggesting the trend coincided with the growth of internet usage, with the impact on happiness visible in surveys across the six countries and in several other nations worldwide.
“This may end up being a lost generation,” Blanchflower, a former Bank of England policymaker, told the Guardian in an interview. He said there had been a sharp drop in wellbeing in the US and the UK in particular, and pointed to the growth of social media, cyberbullying and body shaming online.
