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Aging News & Information
Lifes Pattern Leads to Depression at Middle Age but
Back to Happiness as Senior Citizens
Researchers find that middle-aged misery spans the
globe, not sure why elderly are happy
 Jan. 29, 2008 - We start out pretty happy with life
and then sink into depression at middle age. But, say researchers who
looked at data on 2 million people, we bounce back and are happy again
as senior citizens.
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Aging News &
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Using data on people from 80 nations the
researchers say they found an extraordinarily consistent international
pattern in depression and happiness levels that leaves us most miserable
in middle age.
The researchers found happiness levels followed a U
shaped curve, with happiness higher towards the start and end of our
lives and leaving us most miserable in middle age. Many previous studies
of the life-course had suggested that psychological well-being stayed
relatively flat and consistent as we aged.
Using a sample of 1 million people from the UK, the
researchers discovered that for both men and women the probability of
depression peaks around 44 years of age. In the US they found a
significant difference between men and women with unhappiness reaching a
peak at around 40 years of age for women and 50 years of age for men.
The authors, economists Professor Andrew Oswald
from the University of Warwick in the U.K. and Professor David
Blanchflower from Dartmouth College in the U.S., believe that the
U-shaped effect stems from something inside human beings.
They show that signs of mid-life depression are
found in all kinds of people; it is not caused by having young children
in the house, by divorce, or by changes in jobs or income.
"Some people suffer more than others but in our
data the average effect is large. It happens to men and women, to single
and married people, to rich and poor, and to those with and without
children. Nobody knows why we see this consistency," says Oswald.
"What causes this apparently U-shaped curve, and
its similar shape in different parts of the developed and even often
developing world, is unknown.
However, one possibility is that individuals learn
to adapt to their strengths and weaknesses, and in mid-life quell their
infeasible aspirations.
Another possibility is that cheerful people live
systematically longer.
A third possibility is that a kind of comparison
process is at work in which people have seen similar-aged peers die and
value more their own remaining years. Perhaps people somehow learn to
count their blessings."
"It looks from the data like something happens deep
inside humans. For the average person in the modern world, the dip in
mental health and happiness comes on slowly, not suddenly in a single
year.
Only in their 50s do most people emerge from the
low period. But encouragingly, by the time you are 70, if you are still
physically fit then on average you are as happy and mentally healthy as
a 20 year old. Perhaps realizing that such feelings are completely
normal in midlife might even help individuals survive this phase
better."
They found the same U-shape in happiness levels and
life satisfaction by age for 72 countries: Albania; Argentina;
Australia; Azerbaijan; Belarus; Belgium; Bosnia; Brazil; Brunei;
Bulgaria; Cambodia; Canada; Chile; China; Colombia; Costa Rica; Croatia;
Czech Republic; Denmark; Dominican Republic; Ecuador; El Salvador;
Estonia; Finland; France; Germany; Greece; Honduras; Hungary; Iceland;
Iraq; Ireland; Israel; Italy; Japan; Kyrgyzstan; Laos; Latvia;
Lithuania; Luxembourg; Macedonia; Malta; Mexico; Myanmar; Netherlands;
Nicaragua; Nigeria; Norway; Paraguay; Peru; Philippines; Poland;
Portugal; Puerto Rico; Romania; Russia; Serbia; Singapore; Slovakia;
South Africa; South Korea; Spain; Sweden; Switzerland; Tanzania; Turkey;
United Kingdom; Ukraine; Uruguay; USA; Uzbekistan; and Zimbabwe.
Their paper entitled "Is Well-being U-Shaped over
the Life Cycle?" is to be published in Social Science & Medicine,
reportedly the
worlds most-cited social science journal.
Editors Notes:
The research analyzed information on 500,000
randomly sampled Americans and West Europeans from the General Social
Surveys of the United States and the Eurobarometer Surveys. The authors
also looked at the mental health levels of 16,000 Europeans, the
depression and anxiety levels among a large sample of U.K. citizens, and
data from the "The World Values Survey" which gives samples of people in
80 countries.
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