Are You Happy? Do You Know It?

Studies Show Elders Are As Happy as the Young

Photo by sayhitobel on Unsplash

“Old age is not for sissies,” Bette Davis (among others) is credited with saying. Yet despite the popular perceptions of old age as a downward spiral of continuous creeping decrepitude, research across the globe paints quite a different picture. Statistically speaking, we elders are happy people. Imagine that!

Numerous studies have found that people generally are happy in their youth, experience a sharp decline in contentment through middle age, but then take a turn for the better after age 50 and are as happy or happier in their “golden years” than they were in their youth. (These are broad trends, of course. Your mileage may vary.)

Scientists call this phenomenon the “U-Shaped Curve.” When you graph it, you get a line that looks like a goofy grin.  Add a couple eyeballs and you have an emoji.

The pattern is consistent across populations in North America and Western Europe. It is less pronounced in regions where high poverty is prevalent. The jury is still out on whether the differences result from economics, culture, or genetics. But here’s something remarkable: researchers claim the U-shaped curve also occurs in other primates. A study of happiness in 500 chimpanzees and orangutans, as rated by their zookeepers, found that our close kin on the evolutionary tree also tend to suffer a mid-life crisis.

A Personal Testimonial

Before we discuss why happiness rebounds for elders, I’d like to share my own U-shaped experience.

When I think back on the time that I was happiest, I always land on my senior year of college. For the first three years as an undergraduate, I had managed to balance moderate course loads and one or more part-time jobs while I inched toward my ultimate goal of becoming a world-famous, globe-trotting journalist. My short-term objective was to be the editor of the daily college newspaper. But in my third year, working as a junior editor on the newspaper staff drove me to the brink of physical and emotional exhaustion. Not wanting to go over the edge, I decided that in my final year I would give up on the editorship, and the newspaper. Instead, I hatched a wacky idea: To write a humor column and syndicate it to other college newspapers.

  I tested the idea out on my mentor, the ablest but least tenured member of the journalism faculty. His advice was clear and compelling: “If you don’t do it now, you’ll always wonder what might have happened.” I took that to heart and tore off down the road.

            This was about 100 years before the Internet, of course. To find names and addresses of college papers, I painstakingly copied them from a printed directory in the library, made 2,000 photocopies of sample columns I had previously published, wrote a great cover letter, and mailed these packets out in early September. My offer was simple: Pay me $2 for each column they published. If they wanted to run them every week, so much the better.

            The venture was a limited success. Three or four papers picked up my columns. But the real success was that for a few months, I got to enjoy “a new birth of freedom.” For the first time in my college career, I had a light course load and no employment but the one I had created for myself. I was living off campus with a roommate who proved to be a never-ending source of music, mirth, and marijuana. I had leisure time to sit lollygagging over coffee in the Student Union with friends and other ne’er-do-wells. It was the perfect life.

            The fact that it ended too soon was my own fault. Opportunity knocked –  in the form of the newspaper editorship in the spring semester. I debated it internally for weeks. On the one hand, my fledgling national syndicate and a life of minimal responsibility. On the other hand, achieving my cherished objective. Ambition won. I became editor and reluctantly pulled the plug on my venture. With a net loss of $12, my first entrepreneurial venture had set a pattern that I would follow through a series of far more expensive business failures.

            But back to the U-shaped curve. Now, 50 years later, this newsletter is in many ways parallel to the syndicated column. And once again, I am living my best life. I have no other employment than my own writing. My roommate of 45 years has proven to be an endless supply of affection, companionship, and whole grains. I expect to be back in the coffeehouses with friends and ne’er-do-wells once this cursed global pandemic eases up. All in all, it feels like an even more perfect existence the second time around.

Choose One: Happiness or Slow Death

            I am happy to say that my own experience of the U-shaped curve is not unusual. Many of us enter the post-work years with feelings of relief that the biggest burdens of our middle years are largely complete. We’ve worked, we’ve parented, we’ve adulted, and now there’s freedom to do something entirely new.

            Jonathan Rauch, author of The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50, suggests in an interview that we need to find new language to talk about the years between 65 and 80. “These days,” he says, “this is a gift of 15 years of generally healthy, vibrant life. While we still tend to think of people in this age bracket as old, retired, and ready to die, that’s inaccurate. These people want a new start in life.”

One important final note: happiness correlates with lower mortality.  A study in the United Kingdom that followed 9,000 adults in their 60s for eight years found that in the least happy 25%, the death rate was 29%. In the happiest 25%, the death rate was 9%.

So let’s all try to stay in the happiest quartile!

YOUR TAKE

The subject of ageism in media ignited a flurry of comments. (If you haven’t seen the comments, you can find them at http://theendgame.substack.com//p/news-flash-advertising-portrayals).  Pharmaceutical advertising drew particular ire. Am I the only one who finds it ironic that the advertising world is now portraying our generation as happy, adventurous, vibrant souls because we take lots of drugs? I guess it’s all right if it’s their drugs.

What about you? Are you enjoying a “new birth of freedom?” Tell us about it.