I see what you did there with the titles. Nice.

Most of my experience of my 40s is that I'm tired , there was a global pandemic, and then I blew up my knee.

The global pandemic got better when I was in my 50s.

Well, drat. I've been looking forward to this inexorably increasing happiness over the next few decades.

Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. "One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn't dream about was this" (he waved his hand), "us, the modern world. 'You can only be independent of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end.' Well, we've now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. 'The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.' But there aren't any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?"

I couldn't follow links back far enough to find out how the data was originally collected. Was it just, "pick a number between one and ten and that's how happy you are?" Because, depending what's going on that day, I might say eight or I might say fuck off, and trying to abstract from that to some steadier-state score of individual well-being seems like a stats problem all on its own.

Seconding both 1 and 4.

[Also, side note that might belong in the check-in thread. I'm 46. I just got a colonoscopy because they are now recommended starting at 45 and, apparently, I fall into the category of people for whom change in recommendations is well advised. Surprising because there's no family history of high risk.]

Yeah, this sounds a bit "white people drive like this but black people drive like this" (see also Gen X is A, but millennials are B, which is pretty close to sociological astrology). Happiness is just so subjective and driven by external circumstances. I can make it fit my life because my 40s were mainly the drudgery of cubefarm work and small kid maintenance, capped off by a gigantic freak tragedy. My 50s have been largely pandemic living, but with a wildly more interesting and lucrative job that is 100% remote and coincident with the de facto legalization of weed in NC. Check that U curve, baby! But the gf and I have both been super lucky on the health front and each have mothers still in good health approaching or in their 80s, so it could all come crashing down at a moment's notice.

Looks to me like age differences are converging:
https://sprc.org/scope/age

Are alcoholics or addicts happy? What about murderers? Rates for all of those seem more meaningful than surveys.

Maybe first degree murderers are happy? It's always cheering to have a goal and meet it.

9 was me, cheerfully. Some kind of per-capita misery index seems much more meaningful than mood surveys. I think a bunch of cities are rolling out stuff like this: https://www.goodrx.com/naloxone/narcan-distribution-programs

A friend of my son's got cussed out last month for giving someone passed out and completely unresponsive on the sidewalk Narcan, he wrecked the guy's high by doing it.

Looks like antidepressant use is flat over the last decade in the US, figure 4:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db377.htm

Women take more antidepressants but account for fewer recorded suicides (exception for that is China), are they happier than men?

Here's the distribution of US alcohol consumption, I bet weed looks similar, where is happiness on those histograms?
This data's also a survey, can be compared to aggregate sales to estimate underreporting, maybe that's questionable, but the heavy end of the curve is saying something. Moderate use of either is fine with me fwiw, but definitely habits that can blur the will, and make the question of happiness a pretty remote theoretical idea at the wake-and-bake side of the curve.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think-you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will-tell-you/
abstainers over time:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/353858/alcohol-consumption-low-end-recent-readings.aspx

God knows all the ones doing postgraduate work in it seem miserable.

Isn't that the point of a post doc?

What's the consensus these days about the reliability of alcohol consumption self-reporting? I get tripped up on cans of high-ABV beer, which are closer to 1.5 if not 2 drinks per 12-oz can; I don't know how scrupulous people are about calling a can of Lagunitas IPA "two drinks" or whatever. The trend of alcohol consumption going up with income is wild! Booze is expensive, yes, but still. (Maybe it harmonizes with the age trends?)

Women take more antidepressants but account for fewer recorded suicides (exception for that is China), are they happier than men?

I get the sense that various people here have really strong intuitions about this. Maybe there is no gender-independent definition of happiness? That's my slatepitch.

I'll argue that there is something age-related going on.

I have fucking loved aging out of the male gaze. That has been a fantastic relief.
I also feel like I'm aging out of the give-a-fuck decades, where it mattered so much to be cool. I love having that pressure go away.

Of course I am privileged that those were relatively major influences on my happiness, but since they were, I'm so glad they've gone away. I do have some rough stuff going on in my life, but overall, I feel like my baseline mood has been really notable more serene. Happy, even.

Actually, having the federal government do something about climate change helped a lot as well. I had been feeling near constant despair that we were just going to do fuckall until we roasted. That they did anything lifted the despair.

The guy that made the nice looking chart looked at surveys and compared aggregate survey results with aggregate sales to see that the ratio (sales total)/(survey total) was about 2. CDC heavy drinking uses blood alcohol level as a target to define heavy drinking, and estimates number of typical drinks for typical BMI to reach that.

People who dance well always seem like embodiments of happiness to me, but then Michael Jackson.

I made myself and my gf happy the other day with a barbecue innovation-- I heat peppers and spices in vinegar for a while for my sauce. I added fresh ginger. so good.

12,13: postdocs do most of the interesting work, therefore they are happiest. What?

I have fucking loved aging out of the male gaze.

Happy 26th birthday.

15. Yes. Discontent about attitudes and outcomes definitely is a big source of unhappiness, at least for people in my friend group, and absolutely for me. Seems like less of a trouble source for HS friends who don't identify with their jobs and are chill about identity.
I basically like caring about my work, am still coming to grips with that maybe being unrealistic in years to come. I am afraid of giving up.

Heh.

I'm not convinced the purported gotcha is as significant as the author says it is. I mean, I agree that the earlier studies were a bit simplistic, or perhaps were treated as more universal than they really are. But their finding is both real and meaningful*: all things being equal, your 40s are your emotional nadir. I just don't think it's a brilliant insight to say "ah-hah! But what if your spouse dies when you're 55? Not so happy now, are you!?"

First of all, I don't quite buy that bad things happen with significant inflection at, or near, 50. Particularly when you're talking about wealthy countries and the upper half or even 2/3 of the SES, decent health is pretty common deep into the 70s, and I have no idea what the premise is behind the idea that you're more likely to become poor as you age. Like, who has a good, middle class job at 45 but finds themselves on food stamps at 55? A million steelworkers 30 years ago, but I'm not convinced that's a common occurrence (relative to stasis or increasing income). More important, to my original point, I'm not sure it's a great analytical insight that being permanently laid off at 55 will probably impact your happiness. And, again, what makes that more likely at 55 than 45? Nothing at all. And 45 is really fucking late for switching industries.

*AFAICT anyway; the author doesn't seem to dispute the data, they just think the application is missing something essential

I'm not sure about this from the OP:

But basically, this strikes me as plausible: to make the U-shaped curve, researchers account for health and wealth, because those correlate with age. But they do not account for things like aging parents and raising kids, which also correlate with age. So if you choose to include and exclude various events from your analysis, you get results that reflect the events you kept. Isolate those saddening-events which tend to happen in middle age, and you get a curve that bottoms out around those events.

I guess I'd say that, yes, the point of the conventional wisdom version of these studies is that life events, in aggregate, lead to the U-shape. That seems useful/important to me. And you can't take them out anyway--kids grow up and stop needing care, and just about nobody is caring for their own little ones at 50+, so there's no way to equalize the effects. And parental old age is completely unpredictable and uncorrelated with anything--by the time my dad was my age (3 years younger, actually), both his parents were dead, as was his MIL. None of them were care burdens for him (for geographical reasons, although I'm pretty sure he sent money to help with his mom). Meanwhile, my dad and FIL are in fine health at 79 and almost-82, while my MIL just moved into a home, ending a decade of shittiness having more to do with life-long mental illness than age as such. And of course my mom was in a hospital throughout my 20s and died when I was 30--how can you account for any of that in age/happiness analysis?

By assuming a normally distributed parent.

I have no idea what the premise is behind the idea that you're more likely to become poor as you age. Like, who has a good, middle class job at 45 but finds themselves on food stamps at 55? A million steelworkers 30 years ago, but I'm not convinced that's a common occurrence (relative to stasis or increasing income).

Sure, but that could affect the happiness of those in their 20s who are broke AF. It could be the front half of the U that was also accounted for away.

I get the sense that various people here have really strong intuitions about this. Maybe there is no gender-independent definition of happiness? That's my slatepitch.

I do remember reading that people are extremely good judges of their level of exertion in exercise. Sure you can put someone in an oxygen chamber and measure their VO2 output or estimate it with heartrate or whatever, but it turns out just asking people to rate their exertion on a scale of 1-10 is extremely accurate.

I don't exactly miss the male gaze, but I kinda miss looking like I did then.

I managed to make it through my youth hardly noticing the male gaze. It's amazing what a little unkempt obliviousness can do for you.

There's sort of an in-between period where one isn't 24 but is socially punished for not looking 24, and I think I'm past that. Make-up sometimes makes me look youthful but also sometimes just makes me look tired but more colorful.

20: without social security a lot of middle class people would be poor in old age.

It's a good thing no one is threatening to tank the entire economy in an attempt to destroy Social Security.

When I was young, I was happy to be young. Now I'm not young and the things that used to make me happy don't exist, so I have to learn to be happy about other things. Sometimes that takes a while. This comment is about popular music.

The trend of alcohol consumption going up with income is wild! Booze is expensive, yes, but still.

I got some data from the NSDUH's crosstab tool.

Interestingly, by broad income category, those who did not drink in the past month (or reported this in an extensive survey designed to get around self-reporting problems) were 63% in the lowest-income category
(

Oops, less-than sign.

By broad income category, those who did not drink in the past month (or reported this in an extensive survey designed to get around self-reporting problems) were 63% in the lowest-income category (less than $20k) and went down with income to 42% in the highest-income category ($75k or more).

Those reporting usually having about 1 drink daily in the past month went up with income, from 10% to 22% from lowest to highest category. 2 drinks, the same, 7% to 19%.

But 3 or more didn't change significantly, going from 19% to 17%.

How much of that is just women drink less and earn less than men?

Good question: I can check that sometime today.

The thing I got from this NSDUH analytic tool that continues to stick with me years later is that smoking is correlated negatively with income among every racial group, but not among Hispanics where it's completely flat. Or was last I checked.

That's why you never assume a spherical ethnicity.

Update to 33: the trend is a little more pronounced with men, but exists in both genders.

Men only: 62% of those in lower-income category (less than $20k) had zero drinks on a usual day during the past month, down to 40% among higher-income ($75k+).
Women only: 64% to 44%.

Men: 16% of lower-income usually had 1 or 2 drinks a day, up to 39% of higher-income.
Women: 19% to 44%.

Men: 22% lower-income had 3+ drinks/day, same share of higher-income.
Women: 17% to 12%.

Thanks. I was curious, but not do-work curious.

Actually, I take it back: the income-trend isn't clearly more pronounced with men. Women are a little more likely to drink at all and a little less likely to drink heavily.

"I have no idea what the premise is behind the idea that you're more likely to become poor as you age. Like, who has a good, middle class job at 45 but finds themselves on food stamps at 55? A million steelworkers 30 years ago, but I'm not convinced that's a common occurrence (relative to stasis or increasing income)."

Elderly poverty used to be a much bigger problem.

https://jaredbernsteinblog.com/half-of-century-of-poverty-in-america/

LBJ reduced elderly poverty by a massive amount. Expansions of the welfare system reduce poverty and unhappiness. We should do more of it! Maybe run political campaigns promising to do more of it!

27.2, 38: I'm very aware that SSI, Medicare, and Medicaid have vastly reduced elderly poverty, but that's old news at this point: nobody alive now was ever a poor elderly person in the US.

One thing I'm a little curious about on the holding health constant front is where the threshold is. Essentially nobody is exactly as healthy at 40 as they were at 25, let alone 50+. So presumably they're defining health to exclude aches & pains, pharmaceutically-responsive chronic conditions, etc, but that's a tricky spectrum, and chronic pain is famously damaging to a sense of well-being (so you'd want to exclude, eg, mildly achey knees, but not arthritic knuckles).

We have very little poverty in the form of seniors having trouble affording food like we used to, but plenty of people still feel poor on Social Security alone, even if it's more like low-middle income.

By assuming a normally distributed parent.

Best I can do is a perfectly spherical parent.

This reminds me that I need to look into longterm care insurance.