Sunday, August 05, 2012

Age and happiness

The idea that youth brings happiness is a common belief. After all people usually enjoy the greatest health, attractiveness and freedom while they are young. The graphs below show that older men and women are not less happy. In fact, male happiness peaks in the late 60s and early 70s and then drops. For women, the pattern seems more or less flat. There's a little increase in the 20s and a decline after 70.

Men, n = 22,129



 
Women, n = 28,065


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2 comments:

  1. Pat Boyle9:56 AM

    Well this is encouraging. I think I'll cancel my suicide plans for my 70th birthday.

    Albertosaurus

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous11:19 AM

    I think that it would be more telling/interesting to see how this is broken down across different regions of the U.S. (assuming that the data was from the U.S.).

    - Jake

    ReplyDelete

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