Happy holidays
There have been plenty of attempts to define the often ineffable quality of happiness: a state of emotional well-being; the sensation of joy; or that moment just before you need more happiness, according to Don Draper. We love some good, clean data, but happiness means many different things to many different people. And, just as feelings of happiness vary from person to person, the disparity in contentment can be seen at a broader level too.
Multigeneration elation
According to a regular survey from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), for example, self-reported “happiness levels” across age groups rarely align. At the last count, Americans between 50 and 64 were the least likely group to say they were “very happy”. Conversely, 31% of adults aged 35-49 said they were feeling “very happy” last year, with the youngest and oldest cohorts falling somewhere in-between.
U are gonna be okay
Of course, any survey of something as hard to define as happiness is going to be volatile in any given year. The good news is that a fairly substantial body of research finds that people often, although of course not always, tend to get happier as they grow older. Indeed, hundreds of studies across multiple countries find evidence of a “U-shaped” curve of happiness that sags in middle age, but increases again as we grow older.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, when the NORC ran the survey in 2021 the share of US adults reporting that they felt “very happy” fell to its lowest level since 1972, as Covid blues got people down. Interestingly, however, other studies found no such trend at a global level, with other measures of well-being reportedly holding up during the pandemic according to the World Happiness Report.
