Sometimes it's a bit of a joke:a midlife crisis. Is that something that really exists or is it nonsense?
Divorce, a new (often) younger partner, a sports car… It all seems to be part of a midlife crisis. But is it something that happens to everyone or is it poseritis?
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According to American research, a midlife crisis is real and universal. For example, we are the most unhappy when we are 47.2 years old, but after that there is (fortunately) an upward trend again.
David Blanchflower, an economics professor at Dartmouth College in the United States, studied data from 132 countries to investigate a link between happiness and age. Data was analyzed from UK population surveys conducted in adults under the age of 70 between 2016 and 2018.
The main question that was looked at was:'In general, how satisfied are you with your life at the moment? The zero stood for 'not at all satisfied' and a ten stood for 'completely satisfied'.
The survey showed that people in their forties gave the lowest figures:between 7.7 and 7.9. We generally feel the most unhappy at age 47.2.
According to the researcher, many social relationships change at that age. “A lot of marriages fail and the first peers get sick or die. But it is also the point where we have to let go of our childhood ambitions. All of this leads to a lower feeling of happiness.”
But after this low point, the curve of happiness starts to rise again and according to Blanchflower that feeling is universal. “It seems like some sort of natural process, which makes us suspect that the midlife crisis is in the genes, although that has yet to be researched.”
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