Happiness Increases Into Late Life, Study Says

Up, not down: The age curve in happiness from early adulthood to midlife in two longitudinal studies.

“But at both times of measurement, they were higher in happiness than they were in their late teens and early 20s”, says Galambos.

A study called “Up, Not Down” out of the University of Alberta surveyed the same 1,500 people for up to 25 years.

Nancy Galambos, the information gleaned from the study is crucial because happiness is important. “The results [of the paper] question the myth”.

For about 50 years now, research is mostly hinged on the idea of happiness on a U-shaped curve, marked by a low point that came to be known as the midlife crisis.

One group had Canadian high school seniors between 18 to 43 years while the other consisted of university seniors from 23 to 37 years.

According to Galambos and Krahn – award-winning Faculty of Arts researchers – this study is far more reliable than the research that came before it.

“I’m not trashing cross-sectional research, but if you want to see how people change as they get older, you have to measure the same individuals over time”, argued sociologist Krahn.

“As cross-sectional designs do not assess within-person change, longitudinal studies are necessary for drawing accurate conclusions about patterns of change in happiness across the lifespan”.

And, unsurprisingly, people are most satisfied in the years when they are married and in good physical health, and less happy when unemployed.

After accounting for variations in the participants’ lives, both samples demonstrated a general rise in happiness after high school and university, rather than the steady-dip which was expected.

“We want people to be happier so that they have an easier life trajectory”. But prior claims that happiness starts tanking in the early twenties isn’t necessarily true, according to a new study published in Developmental Psychology.

They found happiness rises fastest when people are between the age of 18 and well into their 30s.