A new economic study says middle age is a miserable time of life and it’s universal.
While the early 40s are good, that nasty “mid life crisis” point hits just a few months after turning 47. The Dartmouth College study of people in 132 countries measured the relationship between well-being and age. It said the lifetimes of people in all countries have what the author calls a U-shaped "happiness curve" that bottoms out at 47-point-two years of age.
What makes up that mid life slump? The parameters for “unhappiness” used in the study include feelings of “despair; anxiety; loneliness; sadness; strain, depression and bad nerves; phobias and panic; being downhearted; having restless sleep; losing confidence in oneself; not being able to overcome difficulties; being under strain; feeling a failure; feeling left out; feeling tense; and thinking of yourself as a worthless person.”
The study says the trajectory of the curve holds true in countries where the median income is high and where it's low and where people live longer and where they don't. The study was distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research on Monday.
The good news is, we all go through it, so we’re never really alone.
Source: New York Post