Rachael Rettner
livescience.com Mon May 17, 3:15 pm ET
Life looks a little rosier after 50, a new study finds. Older people in their
mid- to late-50s are generally happier, and experience less stress and worry
than young adults in their 20s, the researchers say.
The results, based on a Gallup phone survey from 2008 of more than 340,000
Americans, held even after the researchers accounted for factors that could
have contributed to differences in well-being with age, such as whether the
participants were married, had children at home or were employed.
So if having a partner and getting rid of the kids aren't responsible for the
uptick in happiness and general life satisfaction with age, then what is? More
studies will be needed to find out, the researchers say.
"That can be based on social things, on societal things, on biological things;
and for us that is the big question," study researcher Arthur Stone, a
psychologist at Stony Brook University in N.Y.
Two ways to look at life
The findings agree with previous work showing well-being varies with age. And
some studies have narrowed things down to suggest that happiness comes with
being old, male and Republican.
However, the current work included measures of both overall happiness (called
global well-being) and day-to-day experiences of specific feelings such as
stress and happiness (called hedonic well-being).
These two measures of well-being are rarely included in the same study, Stone
said. But they are both important, since global well-being provides a more
reflective look at life while hedonic well-being gives a more immediate view,
he said.
The immediate, hedonic measures - happiness, enjoyment, stress, worry, anger
and sadness - all changed with age, but they showed very different patterns.
For example, stress and anger steadily decreased from young adulthood through
old age. But worry was fairly constant until age 50, when it declined. Sadness
levels rose slightly in the early 40s and declined in the mid 50s, but overall
sadness didn't change much with age.
And people's overall satisfaction with their lives showed a U-shaped pattern,
dipping down until about the age of 50 before trending upward again.
Men and women showed very similar patterns in terms of how well-being changed
with age, though women tended to have higher levels of stress, worry and
sadness. However, women had about the same levels of happiness as men and
tended to feel better overall about their lives, especially during the first 50
years.
The results emphasize the importance of looking at hedonic well-being since
these feelings, particularly the negative ones, don't all vary the same way as
we age, Stone said.
"Looking at well-being really needs to be multidimensional and more
comprehensive than might be suggested by the current literature," he said.
Why are older people happier?
There are several theories that might explain why people feel better with age
that don't have to do with lifestyle factors. It could be, for example, that
older people are better at controlling their emotions than younger people. Or
it might have something to do with nostalgia, the idea that older people
remember fewer negative memories and so are happier.
Also, older people might focus less on what they have or have not achieved, and
more on how to get the most out of the rest of their lives, Stone said.
The results will be published this week in the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.