A new study out of Dartmouth College has confirmed that the most common age to be miserable is 47.
Scientists looked at data across 132 countries, including 95 developing and 37 developed nations to determine the connection between our wellbeing and the time we’ve spent on earth. They concluded that each country has a U-shaped ‘happiness curve,’ with the lowest point for developed countries sitting 47.2 years-old and 42.8 years old for developing countries.
“Unhappiness is hill-shaped in age,” the study’s author, Professor David Blanchflower, said of the findings. “The curve’s trajectory holds true in countries where the median wage is high and where it is not and where people tend to live longer and where they don’t.”
For the purpose of the study, unhappiness was defined by the following feelings:
- Despair
- Anxiety
- Loneliness
- Sadness
- Strain
- Depression
- Bad nerves
- Phobias
- Panic
- Being downhearted
- Having restless sleep
- Losing confidence in oneself
- Not being able to overcome difficulties
- Failure
- Feeling left out
- Feeling tense
- Thinking of yourself as a worthless person
Society as a whole also proved to have an influence over general wellbeing, particularly education, marital status and unemployment, as well as the rise of globalisation and the financial crisis.
“The resiliency of communities left behind by globalisation was diminished by the Great Recession which made it especially hard for the vulnerable undergoing a midlife crisis with few resources, to withstand the shock,” Blanchflower wrote.
“Being married conveys markedly more happiness than being single, and especially more than, say being separated. These are all standard controls in happiness equations.”
Something to look forward to, eh?!
