What research says about happiness throughout life.
This summer, I took my kids to watch the movie 'Inside Out 2', expecting another fun story about the emotions of a young child. While there were definitely some happy moments, the plot focused less on Joy, the main character, and more on a new set of emotions like Anxiety, Embarrassment, and Jealousy that appear as Riley, the lead character, faces the challenges of growing up. As Riley experiences these new feelings, happiness is pushed aside to make room for teenage struggles. Watching my 6- and 9-year-old children take in this message, I found myself tearing up as Joy sadly remarked, “I guess that happens when you grow up; you feel less joy.”
But do we really feel less happiness as we get older? My initial thought was yes. Many times this summer, I watched my kids swim joyfully at the local pool, jump in the ocean waves, and bury themselves in the sand. I couldn’t help but wish I could get as excited about these simple activities as my kids did.
Thankfully, my feelings about this might be wrong.
Scientists are highly interested in studying how happiness, or what they call "subjective well-being," changes over time. Subjective well-being includes happiness, but goes beyond just how we feel in the moment and covers long-term stability. Researchers have proposed different theories about what happens to happiness and well-being as we grow older.
Some believe it’s mostly about personality, suggesting that happy people will stay happy throughout life, while those who are often sad will likely continue to feel that way. Others suggest that happiness actually increases with age. For example, well-known researcher Laura Carstensen has proposed that as we age, we become more motivated to find meaning in life and experience as much happiness as possible before we die. The core idea is that, as humans, we are very aware of time and the concept that “time is running out,” which may push us to focus on what makes us happiest as we get older. Supporting this idea, Carstensen and her colleagues have found that older adults tend to care more about the present than the future and, contrary to popular belief, are less likely to dwell on the past, instead choosing to live in the moment. They also interact with fewer people, saving their energy for those they care about most (Carstensen et al., 1999, review).
While this theory makes sense, other research suggests it might be too simple, and that changes in happiness and well-being could follow more complex patterns. For instance, some studies have found that happiness decreases as children age, but then increases again as adults enter their later years. A study of over 500,000 Americans and Europeans looked at happiness and well-being from the 1970s to the early 2000s and found that well-being does decline from childhood to adulthood, hits its lowest point in midlife (around the late 40s), and then starts to rise again into older age (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2008).
A more recent analysis of over 400 studies found a similar, though slightly more complex pattern. In this case, life satisfaction decreased during adolescence (ages 9 to 16), then rose until around age 70, with a slight dip between ages 40 and 50 (Buecker et al., 2023). This study, along with others, found that after 70, well-being declines again, due to various factors. For example, in a study of nearly 2,000 men over 22 years, researchers found that life satisfaction peaked at age 65, but then dropped as people got closer to death. Factors like marital status and physical health also played a role, showing that many details, such as personality, major life changes, gender, and economic status, need to be considered (Mroczek & Spiro, 2005).
Overall, while this research is somewhat mixed, two points are clear: We may experience less happiness over time in some ways, but it seems to turn around in midlife when happiness begins to rise again. This makes sense when you think about it: We lose some of the joy we had as children, especially as we deal with the pressures of establishing careers, raising families, and handling responsibilities in early adulthood. But for many people, it does eventually come back. Most of my friends are now in middle age, and I can see their happiness starting to increase. We’ve let go of youthful insecurities and feel comfortable being ourselves; we’ve raised our kids to a point where they have some independence; our careers are stable, and we have close friends to lean on. So, while we may experience less happiness as we grow up, there’s hope that it can return to us as we get older.