Health Discovery: Feeling Glum? Hold On—Happiness Lies Ahead

If you’re not feeling particularly upbeat these days, just hang in there, because the older you are, the happier you are likely to be.

That’s what Yang Yang, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, found in analyzing the results of face-to-face interviews with about 28,000 Americans ages 18 to 88, conducted periodically over three decades by the university’s National Opinion Research Center.

The interviewees, a representative sample of the population, were asked whether they were very happy, pretty happy or not too happy. It turned out that those over the age of 80 were the happiest of all, with about half of them saying they were very happy. Although the boomers—born from 1946 to 1964—were the least content, the hope is that their outlook will improve with age.

“Dr. Yang’s study fits with findings from social psychological research on life-span development—that the transition from middle age to later life often brings an increase in psychological well-being,” says Georgeanne E. Patmios, a program officer with the Behavioral and Social Research Program at the National Institute on Aging. “Older people typically appear to be better at regulating their emotions, experience negative emotions less often, and are more likely to focus on the positive.”

The study was published in the American Sociological Review in April.