Creator: Ridofranz | Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
Sometime in early adulthood, usually around the age of 20, the average person’s wellbeing will begin to decline. It’s not a steep drop, but it is predictable and it is persistent.
A few decades later — somewhere between the ages of 45 and 50 — the average person’s wellbeing will bottom out. Thankfully, it will then start to rise again.
Experts refer to this phenomenon as the “U-shaped happiness-age curve,” or simply the “midlife dip.” While some have tried to throw shade at the whole concept (and those criticisms have garnered more than their share of media attention), the happiness dip stands on a robust foundation of peer-reviewed work.
“There is a huge amount of evidence to support this dip — over 600 published papers,” says David Blanchflower, PhD, a professor of economics at Dartmouth. “Those who say it doesn’t exist are ignoring the data.”
Blanchflower is one of the foremost authorities on the midlife happiness dip. In one of his recent papers, he and his colleagues analyzed datasets from 145 countries and found that the happiness dip was a near-universal phenomenon. Other researchers have even found that our primate relatives likewise experience a midlife drop in happiness and wellbeing.
I have a personal interest in this research because I turned 40 last year. At times I can feel the dip’s immutable gravity pulling me downward. I’m not in midlife-crisis mode, at least not yet, but I can see yellow sportscars and hair dye looming grotesquely on my horizon.
For many of us, our 40s are a decade of hard truths. You’re forced to accept that you’re not going to be all the things you dreamed of being when you were young.
I asked Blanchflower to explain the dip. Why does it happen, and what can I do about it?
“Look, I’m an economist, not a psychologist,” he says. “But when you consider that we find the same thing happening in apes, that suggests it may be something completely natural — something deep in our genes.”
The researchers who found the happiness dip in apes are psychologists, and they speculated that “age-related changes in brain structures” could explain the phenomenon.
To back this up, they site work that has linked certain brain regions (namely the left prefrontal cortex) to higher levels of wellbeing. According to that work, which was led by a team at the University of Wisconsin, the left prefrontal cortex fires up in response to goal-directed behaviors.
I couldn’t find much evidence that left prefrontal cortex activation naturally declines at midlife and then improves later in life. But the studies on goal-directed behaviors and well-being, which are numerous, consistently show that people tend to thrive when they have interesting, engaging, and attainable hobbies or ambitions. According to the authors of a 2021 paper in Clinical Psychological Science, higher well-being and lower depressive symptoms were strongly linked to “having goals that were more attainable, under control, and expected to bring more joy.”
I don’t know about middle-aged apes, but I can see how middle-aged humans might suffer from a relative scarcity of those types of goals.
At midlife, financial and family constraints lock many of us into jobs that have grown stale and uninspiring. It’s difficult to quit your job — or pick up a new hobby — when your kids and your career are sucking up all your time and energy.
Meanwhile, midlife is also the place where many old goals and ambitions go to die. “By middle age, your expectations become more realistic,” Blanchflower says. For many of us, our 40s are a decade of hard truths. You’re forced to accept that you’re not going to be all the things you dreamed of being when you were young. More doors close than open.
Physical limitations also spring up, often in the form of novel back or joint injuries. I have played sports my whole life, and I’ve never had so much as a sprained ankle. But last spring I took a little spill off a stand-up paddle board, twisted my knee, and dealt with months of minor but restrictive pain. Ten months later, I still can’t kick a soccer ball with my kids without feeling a twinge.
‘This experience of a midlife dip isn’t unique to you, and while it may be tough and you may struggle, things are going to get better again.’
All of this stuff takes a toll, and many of us compound the pain by seeking relief in the wrong places. We drink more, eat more, and spend more money than we should on stuff we don’t need. These provide temporary hits of pleasure, but they often leave us feeling worse, not better. Meanwhile, many of us neglect our social relationships, which may offer the greatest protection against the midlife happiness dip.
The good news, Blanchflower says, is that we are remarkably resilient and adaptable. Given a little time, nearly all of us adjust. We recalibrate our expectations, and we find new ambitions that excite us. We re-learn the importance of close friendship, and we recognize the insufficient rewards of substances and stuff.
There’s plenty of research-backed advice I could offer here to speed along this process of adaptation. Devote less time to watching TV and more time to the people who matter to you. Spend money on new experiences, not stuff. Find a new hobby.
But even if you don’t do any of that, you’ll probably come out at the other end of this just fine.
“This experience of a midlife dip isn’t unique to you, and while it may be tough and you may struggle, things are going to get better again,” Blanchflower promises. “Everyone gets through it.”
CREDIT: MEDIUM.COM/THE NUANCE
