The Happiness Graph: Happiness Increases After Mid Life

Photo credit: Diego Grez. It’s his grandfather, Mario Cañete Farías in 2007. (Wikipedia image)

What makes people happy? There aren’t any clear answers to this question and culture and upbringing have a lot of say as to the responses of individuals. But generally, if people are to be asked this question, they will likely answer things that revolve around wealth, health, family or peer, and achievement. This is only a short list, but you get the idea. For the religious, God cannot be missed in the list. So these are the main areas where people find happiness. But, these things that make us happy aren’t given equal importance in any one period in a person’s life.

In the many stages of life, people tend to give value to different things. For children, family would be of high importance; young adults would likely rank achievement on top; near-retirement individuals will likely choose wealth; and those above the age of sixty will agree that it’s good health that would make them happy. Discounting life-changing factors such as tragedies, etc., it’s clear how various factors make people happy in specific stages of their life and what they deem important is dependent on three things, which are gender, personality, circumstances, and age.

Surveys and other studies have helped to establish the life happiness graph, otherwise known as the “snapshot of the age distribution of psychological well-being [in the United States]. One particular survey was crucial in the creation of the life happiness chart. That was the 2008 Gallup phone survey of 340,000 Americans, the results of which were reported by Arthur Stone and his fellow researchers. It had supported the long-held notion that after the so-called mid-life crisis, the level of happiness of people (in the US at least) shoots up. More specifically, the levels of anger, stress, and worry generally become lower as Americans age beyond fifty years. Before mid-life, happiness appears to be in a downward slide beginning at a certain young age. The average mid-life age is 46.

The Happiness Chart shows a dip in happiness in mid life, but it shoots up from there.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the happiness curve is like a letter “U” or a smiley icon. Children we have no worries, and everything is taken care of by our parents or guardians. But as kids age, the requirements of education and problems in the growing up years lessen perceived happiness. After this adjustment stage, the young adult years give a sense of stability and pride in successful jobs held and achievements in business and family. But, as we all know, this stage of settling down is temporary even as child-rearing and relationship problems crop up that put a damper on overall happiness. Such problems don’t last though, and come the middle age of fifty, when the kids are grown up and have families of their own, people become freer and are able to do what we’ve always wanted to. From then on, happiness shoots for the sky, and that’s also where people begin to look up to as they grow spiritually, with worldly things like iPads and Ferraris losing their appeal and importance.

In many ways, the life happiness graph is like a reflection of a person’s life. It’s kind of like a lifetime biofeedback chart which shows what to expect as people grow older in years. If people will take the time to evaluate their life in relation to the chart, they can change their priorities and make adjustments for a happier life, whatever stage they’re in.

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