Peak misery comes at age 47.2, according to economist

There’s good news for everyone that’s not 47.2 years old: You have either not reached peak misery yet or have already left it behind.

News 12 Staff

Jan 14, 2020, 7:54 PM

Updated 1,563 days ago

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Peak misery comes at age 47.2, according to economist
There’s good news for everyone that’s not 47.2 years old: You have either not reached peak misery yet or have already left it behind.
If you are 47.2 years old, don’t worry. You are going to get through this.
An economic study has concluded that 47.2 years old is the moment of peak unhappiness in the developed world. The study from David Blanchflower, a Dartmouth College professor and former Bank of England policy maker, considered data from across 132 countries to measure the relationship between well-being and age.
According to Bloomberg, he concluded that in every country there is a “happiness curve” that is U-shaped over lifetimes. It reaches its lowest in the developing nations at 48.2.
According to the New York Post: “Unhappiness is hill-shaped in age,” Blanchflower wrote in the study, published in the National Bureau of Economic Research.
“The curve’s trajectory holds true in countries where the median wage is high and where it is not and where people tend to live longer and where they don’t,” wrote Branchflower.
The Post reports that the study considered “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.”
Add up all those factors and you have yourself quite a crisis – midlife or not. Anyone who is going through a hard time can reach out to the National Alliance on Mental Illness at 800-950-NAMI.
It’s best to remember what the Roman poet Ausonius once wrote: “Let us never know what old age is. Let us know the happiness time brings, not count the years.”


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