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No, Middle-Aged People Are Not Really Less Happy Than Anyone Else

By Sonja Lyubomirsky on May 14, 2008 in How of Happiness

I am currently teaching a seminar on “positive psychology,” which deals mostly with research on happiness. To date, I have assigned several papers about happiness written by economists, and most of the class, it seems, has found these papers a bit hard to read. Clearly, psychologists and economists approach the same problems quite differently, and here I’d like to offer one example. It involves a fundamental misunderstanding that has been circulating in the media about a recent economics paper reporting that middle-aged people are less happy than younger or older folks.

In the article in question, economists Blanchflower and Oswald reported a “U-shaped” relationship between happiness and age — namely, that middle-aged people are less happy than their younger and older counterparts. (If you think of changes in happiness over time to form the shape of the letter “U,” then younger and older people are at the top two parts of the “U” and the middle-aged are at the trough.) How did these two economists reach this conclusion? Well, if you look at the paper carefully, they actually compared the happiness of the young and old only after statistically controlling for a host of circumstantial factors. In other words, the question they asked is not whether middle-aged people differ in their happiness from others, but whether middle-aged people who are in the same life circumstances as younger and older people differ from others. To be sure, relative to those who are much younger or older, people between ages 40 and 50 are reaching the height of their careers, financially better off, and enjoying their families. Because all of these factors contribute somewhat to happiness, studies that simply compare how happy people are at various ages have found midlife to be one of life’s happier periods. What Blanchflower and Oswald found is that if we assumed that people in their 20s and 70s had the same income, education level, employment, and marital status as the middle-aged, then they’d be happier than those in their 40’s. This might be thought of as the “pure” effect of age. Do you have a hard time grasping what that even means? Then you’ve got company!

Comments

It makes sense

Submitted by anon on May 14, 2008 - 3:15pm.

To me, it makes sense (sort of):

Take 3 people earning the same income: a 20-year old, 40-year old, and 70-year old.

The 20-year old probably thinks that his income will rise in the future (and he is already earning what the 40-year old is), so he is happy

The 70-year old earned more in his peak (and more than what the 40-year old is earning now) and he is almost "done" with working, so he is happy.

The 40-year old is earning the most he will ever earn in his life (which is the same as the 20-year old), and it is now only down from here. So he is not as happy.


Money the Only Factor?

Submitted by Anonymous on May 14, 2008 - 4:57pm.

This assumes that income is the only factor involved in producing happiness.
I'm thinking that mid-life might get tagged as an unhappy period because a number of folks are dealing with aging children, stale careers, and the confusing change of perspective from "time is unlimited" to "how much time do I have left?".


money: maybe

Submitted by anon on May 16, 2008 - 2:23pm.

yeah, you're correct.

I assumed that income is the only factor, since economists were doing the survey :-)


right, not the only factor

Submitted by Sonja Lyubomirsky on June 26, 2008 - 1:44am.

Good point, but the economists who did the study controlled for educational level, employment, and marital status too -- so, not just money.


The Art of Happiness

Submitted by Kristopher on May 14, 2008 - 6:45pm.

As J.D. Taylor, a little-known poet, once wrote, "Without passion, nothing moves." One of the biggest and most fought about factors between couples is money. My favorite adage is "Money can't buy happiness." I urge you to tell that to a married couple to judge their response.

But, truth be told, money is a small factor. In fact, the dynamics of a relationship depend on a person's response to those factors. If either person does not keep a perspective on things, it would be very easy to be self-deceptive, thereby causing a fight or "rift," if you will, between the would-be happy couple.

Dr. Albert Ellis, a cognitive-behavioral psychologist, once said that no one makes us angry. How we respond to a situation or a person is what makes us angry. In a sense, only we ourselves can illicit an emotional response (angry, happy, sad, etc.), not our environment or those within it. It might be difficult to keep our emotions or thoughts in-check, but if we do, we can moderate, to some degree, our emotional responses that influence our lives both negatively and positively.

And this is true not just for couples. As the saying goes, "Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff." Age, sex, religion, politics--those are all byproducts or attributes of what we are first and foremost: human. If we accept, acknowledge, and encourage that, I think we have an immeasurable potential to be not only happy but also content with how and who we are at any phase or stage in our lives.

Thoughtful,
Kris


The essence of freedom

Submitted by Benjamin on May 14, 2008 - 8:30pm.

It was stated that “. . . only we ourselves can illicit an emotional response (angry, happy, sad, etc.), not our environment or those within it.” While I agree that happiness is, in large part, a conscious choice, I would add that many environmental factors affect our emotional state on a more unconscious level thereby eliciting emotional responses seemingly without our consent.

Rollo May, an existential psychologist, once stated that human freedom exists in our capacity to pause between stimulus and response and, in that pause, choose which direction we wish to throw our weight. I believe that this capacity is the essence of self-awareness and out of that self-awareness will arise the ability to conduct more fruitful lives.


Not an even scale

Submitted by AAtencio on May 16, 2008 - 6:04pm.

I think the "U" shape in this study comes from the flattening of the things that contribute to happiness in the various age groups. If you assume all things are equal in that the factors that contribute to happiness in a 40-year old are present for a 20 and 70-year old than you have to flatten the factors the other way and give the 40-year old all of the happiness factors in the other two age groups and also give them the un-happy factors from the 40-year old. You can't just say that if a 20-year old is at a happiness level of 6 out of 10 on their own then if we add 3 more points to them based on the happiness of a 40-year old thus they are happier. This is an unrealistic look at the factors of happiness and unhappiness.

I would have to agree with you Sonja in that the logic is faulty to me. As a 43-year old I would say if you are going to give a 20-year old all the attributes that make me happy to make things equal then you also have to give them the things that make me unhappy, like declining health, a sense of mortality, the unfulfillment of dreams not realized, etc. Then tell me saddled with the negative aspects of happiness that they are still more happy than us. And at the same time give me the things that make them happy like a lack of commitment to anything, the innocences of the soul, the optimism of inexperience, etc. and see how happy I am. If you are truly going to level the field level it both ways!

Andy


Age and wellbeing

Submitted by Ulrich Schimmack on June 8, 2008 - 2:25pm.

For me, the main question is why we are interested in the correlation between age and wellbeing in the first place.

One reason for the vast number of studies on this issue is simply that age is easy to measure. So, we often have data on the correlation between age and other measures.

In the absence of other, more relevant data, we analyze the data we have, so we study age and wellbeing.

Let's add age to death and taxes as some of the inevitable aspects of human life.

Even if middle age is bad for my wellbeing. What am I supposed to do about it. Skip it?

The more interesting question would be why middle-age may have some negative effects on wellbeing.

I am eagerly awaiting research findings that go beyond the demonstration of a correlation, no matter whether we examine the simple correlation or the partial correlation after controllling for a host of other variables.


What about height?

Submitted by Sonja Lyubomirsky on June 26, 2008 - 1:49am.

Hi Uli -- I totally agree. Of course, there are many other (relatively) easily measurable variables (e.g., marital status, income, etc.), which have produced an untold number of correlations with well-being.

My favorite recent (and unexamined) variable is height. It turns out that happy people are a little bit taller. I'd love to see the causal direction explored in that...


middle age unhappiness

Submitted by Linda g on July 25, 2008 - 2:56pm.

When I read/heard about this study, my first explanation wwas,of course, teenagers!
Most middle aged people are in the process of raising teens-a difficult transition for many if not most parents and teens.
Now that our youngest is over 18 and has achieved some hard won maturity, we are all happier. Also, I believe long standing research has shown that marital satisfaction(happiness) rises significantly after the last child is out of the house.
Please look at this factor in the data.


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Sonja Lyubomirsky

Sonja Lyubomirsky is a social psychologist at the University of California, Riverside and author of The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want.

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