Do people become happier after 40?

“LIFE BEGINS at forty”, according to an old saying popularised by a self-help book from the 1930s. The theory goes that years of hard work are rewarded with less stress and better pay; children begin to fly the nest; and with luck, a decent period of good health remains. A quick glance at self-reported happiness across the world appears to corroborate this view.

People in their teens and early 20s start out reasonably cheerful. Gallup, a pollster, asked a representative sample of people in 158 countries to rate their life satisfaction on a scale from zero to ten. The data reported by the authors of the World Happiness Report, an academic study backed by the UN, show that happiness among people across the world aged 15-19 was 5.35 on average in 2016-18. A slow depression then appears to set in. By the age of 35-39 average self-reported happiness falls to 5.09 points. Once people hit 40 their depression gradually lifts. At the age of 70 an individual’s self-reported happiness rises to 5.58 points, on average. On this basis happiness during a person’s lifetime follows a gentle U-shape.