Does Happiness Improve at Age 50? Maybe Not for Everyone

Having a midlife crisis may sound like a cliche or the plot of a bad movie. But the reality is that there is a widespread theory that your happiness takes a dip in midlife before rebounding at age 50.

In fact, The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50 is an entire book built around this premise. The book helped popularize a "U-shaped curve of well-being" that shows happiness peaking in your 20s, plummeting in your 40s, and then rising again after 50.

This idea seems to make sense intuitively as well. After all, both your 20s and your retirement years are often a time of freedom and exploration, while midlife is when you're in the thick of things with building a career, raising a young family, and coping with a lot of responsibility. As Jonathan Rauch points out in The Happiness Curve, Dante's descent into hell began in middle age.

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Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

A new study, however, suggests that this commonly accepted belief that life gets better after 50 may not be as straightforward as it seems. Instead, life may get better after 50 for one particular group, and the improvement may have more to do with the unique situation that group is facing, rather than biological or social norms impacting happiness.

Here are some more details on whose lives are improving the most in their 50s, along with some insight into what the data means for you.

What's really behind the notion that you get happier in your 50s?

The new study questioning the U-shaped happiness curve was published in the Journal of Labor Economics. Researchers from USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences teamed up with experts from Amsterdam to study mental well-being in unemployed men 50 and over.

The researchers discovered what has been described as a "stark mental health gap," as unemployed men in their 50s were 23 percentage points more likely to report depression compared with their peers who were gainfully employed.

The numbers were so dismal that the researchers found unemployed middle-aged men were more than twice as likely to experience depression as men within this age group who had lost a spouse.

However, by the age of 65 (or the country's standard retirement age), the mental health gap disappeared, and there was no longer a marked change in happiness levels. This held true across multiple countries with different retirement ages included in the study, including within the U.S.

Across the board, researchers discovered an 18% drop in mental distress experienced among unemployed men after reaching their country's early retirement age and an even greater 37% drop in distress just five years later.

Based on this data, researchers concluded that the "rise" in happiness over 50 may really be a reflection of increased happiness among this particular demographic group.

Because the U-shaped curve reflects averages among the entire population, the dramatic mental health improvements among unemployed men may have skewed the research entirely and made it appear there was a widespread happiness bump instead of a very large bump among a small group.

As the researchers pointed out, this may explain why the well-being curve is found in some research but not in other studies, as it's driven by this subgroup that experiences such a significant improvement in happiness.

Are work norms the reason for the happiness curve?

Since all signs point to the fact that unemployed men are skewing the data, researchers concluded that it's not biological factors or an increase in leisure time that causes improved happiness after 50. Instead, it's attitudes about work.

Specifically, when men view themselves as unemployed during a time when society expects them to be working, they're unhappy. “Being jobless in midlife isn’t just about lost income,” said Coen van de Kraats, the study's lead author. “It’s about lost identity.”

Once they reach retirement age and work is no longer the norm, their mindset shifts. As van de Kraats explained, “as society’s expectations shift with age, some men find emotional relief not by changing their employment situation, but by no longer feeling they’ve failed to meet it.”

The shift in social expectations erases the stigma associated with job loss, allowing the men's mental health to improve once they are no longer facing such powerful social expectations surrounding their working life.

Improving happiness after 50 — or at any age

Since the study suggests that the U-shaped curve of well-being may not be a universal feature of aging, but rather a psychosocial phenomenon shaped by social roles and identity, it calls into question the general assumption that your happiness will naturally improve as you age.

In other words, getting older and even gaining more flexibility and leisure time do not necessarily lead to greater happiness. So what will?

One option is to try adopting the habits that have been proven to be associated with a happy retirement, including taking steps to stay healthy, building and maintaining strong social connections, identifying a clear sense of purpose for yourself, continuing to learn and grow, and training your brain toward optimism.

As for the unemployed men who suffer so much until reaching traditional retirement age, exploring options to get back into the workforce may be helpful, as can being mindful of how your perceptions of society's expectations shape your feelings about your situation.

There's no sugar coating it. Being laid off in the years before retirement can affect your happiness and your finances. However, making a solid plan to respond to these challenges could help you avoid having to wait years until your retirement age for your mental health to be restored.

Read More

• Eight Habits for a Happy Retirement
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