The concept of a mid-life crisis has long been debated: is it a universal experience or a media-fueled myth? Studies analyzing life satisfaction offer compelling insights into this question. Data consistently show that happiness follows a predictable trajectory: it rises during youth, declines through middle age, and rebounds later in life.
Conversely, negative emotions follow the inverse pattern—lowest in youth and old age, but peaking in midlife. When these trends are plotted, happiness forms a U-shaped curve, with its nadir around age 50 and peaks at ages 30 and 70, while unhappiness appears as a hump during middle age.
This pattern, verified across 146 countries with data dating back to 1973, even extends to hominids, reinforcing the notion that the mid-life crisis is a widespread phenomenon. As David Blanchflower, an economist at Dartmouth College and co-author of a seminal 2008 paper on the U-shaped happiness curve, remarked that the evidence is ironclad and conclusive, which is one of the most compelling and enduring patterns in the social sciences.
However, Blanchflower now argues that this decades-old curve may be changing. In a recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper, he and his colleagues observed that the once U-shaped curve of happiness has shifted, driven by an increase in unhappiness among younger people. Instead of a mid-life low point, the curve now shows a steady upward trend in happiness with age, as younger generations report declining well-being. As Blanchflower suggests in a blog post, this shift in youth happiness may be reshaping the entire life-course trajectory of emotional well-being.
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This longitudinal study on unhappiness, analyzing data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2009 to 2022, sheds light on the growing mental health crisis, particularly among young people. The survey asked respondents to assess their mental health, including stress, depression, and mood problems. The study focused on individuals who reported experiencing poor mental health for all 30 days.
Although more than half of respondents from 2020 to 2022 reported no poor mental health days, a worrying 7% of respondents said they had 30 days of poor mental health. This figure has nearly doubled when comparing data from 1993 to 2023, with the fastest-growing rate of despair found among young people, particularly women aged 18 to 25. Blanchflower estimates that 11% of young women fall into this category, a statistic he describes as both “alarming and deeply troubling.”
Carol Graham, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution, underscores the severity of these findings, particularly the reversal of conventional happiness patterns. “What we never expected was that the lowest point of happiness in life would now occur in youth—when life is just getting started. That stage of life should be filled with hope, not marked by anxiety, frustration, and despair. Something has gone terribly wrong,” Graham warns.
The shifts observed in the relationship between age and unhappiness are striking. Prior to 2019, the pattern of despair mirrored the U-shaped curve previously identified, with midlife as the low point of well-being. However, starting in 2019, the rise in unhappiness among individuals under 45, particularly those under 25, fundamentally altered this trajectory. Blanchflower, originally intent on validating the U-curve of happiness, was confronted with an unexpected finding.
This shift in the happiness curve raises urgent questions about the pressures facing younger generations and highlights the growing mental health challenges in modern society.
Blanchflower’s evolving perspective reflects a deepening awareness of the underlying trends driving unhappiness. He initially attributed much of the blame to the COVID-19 pandemic, but now concedes that this was an oversight. “The pandemic is just accelerating a trend that was already there,” he admits.
In their recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) report, Blanchflower and his colleagues expanded their scope, analyzing data from the U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. They found that the troubling rise in unhappiness among younger generations is a global phenomenon, as confirmed by data from the Global Mindfulness Project, which spans 34 countries from 2020 to 2023. The results revealed that the younger the respondents, the higher their levels of unhappiness, challenging the previously accepted hump-shaped curve. “We thought this was only true in the U.S., but it’s actually happening everywhere, and that’s exactly why we’re panicked,” Blanchflower remarks.
In a follow-up blog post, Blanchflower and his co-author revisited happiness trends, testing whether the well-known U-shaped curve had shifted. By comparing data from 2005 to 2018 and then to 2022, they found that while the U-shaped happiness curve persisted until 2018, the 2022 data painted a starkly different picture. The classic curve had transformed into a steadily rising graph, with young people now at the lowest point and happiness increasing with age. This result noted that the U-shaped curve was once considered a globally consistent and intuitive pattern.
Blanchflower’s current research excludes happiness data, focusing instead on the consequences of sustained negative emotions. The authors argue that persistent poor mental health is linked to absenteeism from school, psychiatric hospitalizations, and rising suicide rates. From a medical perspective, becoming unhappy is much easier than recovering happiness, highlighting the overlap between those reporting severe unhappiness and groups facing crises such as suicide, drug overdoses, and alcoholism. His research seeks to identify early indicators of these tragic outcomes.
The precise causes of this shift in emotional well-being remain elusive. This research urges further investigation into the societal and technological forces reshaping happiness and mental health, suggesting that a fundamental shift in well-being may be unfolding across the globe.
The challenge, as Blanchflower underscores, is to identify effective strategies that can mitigate the growing sense of hopelessness, especially among youth. This requires a multifaceted approach that addresses not only the mental health implications but also the broader social, technological, and economic factors contributing to the problem.
Source: scientificamerican, psychology today
