Life may be about to get happier.
According to the Economist, new studies show that the “self-reported well-being” that people feel over the course of their lives resembles a “U-bend.” We start happy as teenagers, then become more and more stressed and uncomfortable. Then we hit 46. That’s when the U-bend begins to go up. According to the Economist, this is fairly constant among cultures and even income levels — “Americans and Zimbabweans have not been formed by similar experiences, yet the U-bend appears in both their countries.” The academics who authored one study on the U-bend noted that Pete Townshend, once the angry young man leading the Who, is past 60 and “writing a blog that glowed with good humour.”
