It hardly registers that most of us over the age of 50 today have been given the most incredible gift, one that has accumulated unnoticed over the last century. If anyone the early 1900s had been told that if they migrated to the present day, they could look forward to thirty extra years of life, they would have been amazed. The fact that half of those born today are likely to live to be a hundred – that’s almost twice the average lifespan of a century ago- seems even more extraordinary.
Yet the longevity bonus – one of the major achievements of the 21st century- is hardly celebrated in the way that it deserves to be. There is more to the bonus than extra years, being older generally means staying younger for longer, we are ageing better and staying healthy for longer. Yet society’s view of what it means to grow old today has hardly caught up with the new reality.
It is only recently that the most precious part of the gift came to light in a surprising way. A couple of UK economists, Andrew Oswald and Andrew Blanchflower, looking for a correlation between issues like unemployment and life satisfaction. Unsurprisingly they did find that unemployment is linked to unhappiness but then in the 1990s they noticed something unexpected.
A remarkably consistent finding across different countries showed that there is a correlation between age and happiness. The pattern that emerged was shaped like a smile, upturned at either end with a dip in the middle at midlife in the late forties. The upswing in the pattern of well- being, where people were more satisfied with their lives than at any time since their teens, curved up from the 50s and continued in a gentle curve into the 70s.
In other words, later years are the happiest time of adult life. Maybe we need to shout this from the rooftops to bring home the realisation and to dispel the clouds of negativity about growing older and the demographic shift as populations age.
The discovery led to journalist Jonathan Rauch’s book ‘The Happiness Curve- why life gets better after midlife.’ This turns the assumption that we get unhappier with age upside down. Beyond fifty, it seems that getting older alters the way we perceive things, a change which results a tendency to greater contentment. We are more accepting and less stressed than during their middle years when there are the demands of career, parenthood and ambition. Rauch sums up the upward swing of the happiness curve that comes with age in just three words “Gratitude comes easier.”
