Mind: Happiness May Come with Age

Something to look forward to ...

A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older, and researchers are not sure why.

In measuring immediate well-being — yesterday’s emotional state — the researchers found that stress declines from age 22 onward, reaching its lowest point at 85. Worry stays fairly steady until 50, then sharply drops off. Anger decreases steadily from 18 on, and sadness rises to a peak at 50, declines to 73, then rises slightly again to 85. Enjoyment and happiness have similar curves: they both decrease gradually until we hit 50, rise steadily for the next 25 years, and then decline very slightly at the end, but they never again reach the low point of our early 50s.

Or are the differences due to the different experiences of these particular experiences? E.g., would the results be different if the polls had been done twenty years earlier?

For more, see Happiness May Come with Age, Study Says by Nicholas Bakalar, May 31, 2010.