HealthBridge's In-Home Care Blog

General well-being (characterized by how people currently felt about their life) fell sharply through the age of 25 and tapered more gradually overall until the ages of 50 to 53. And by the early 70s, that wellbeing was back up to late-teen levels. 

"As people age, they are less troubled by stress and anger," the researchers noted in their study, which was led by Arthur Stone, of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stony Brook University, and published online May 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "And although worry persists, without increasing, until middle age, " they continued, "it too fades after the age of 50."

The data come from a 2008 phone survey performed by the Gallup Organization of 340,847 randomly selected adults aged 18 to 85. The respondents represented a fairly average slice of the U.S. population, with about 29 percent holding a college degree and a median monthly average household income between $3,000 and $3,999. During the call, participants were asked to rate how they currently felt their life stood on a scale of 0 ("the worst possible life for you") to 10 ("the best possible life for you"). They were then asked if they had felt different affective states (happiness, enjoyment, stress, sadness, anger and worry) "a lot of the day yesterday." Keeping questions to relatively current periods in time by asking about yesterday as opposed to the previous week, month or year helped the researchers avoid some of the retrospective bias that might have played a role in similar past studies.