A team of international researchers have attempted to answer the question of when one is happiest in life, and according to their findings, a child’s life satisfaction decreases between the ages of nine and 16, but slightly increases until its peak at the age of 70.
“We focused on changes in three central components of subjective well-being,” explains professor Susanne Bücker. “Life satisfaction, positive emotional states and negative emotional states.”
Life satisfaction then dropped off again until the age of 96.
The researchers believe this decline is a result of changes to the body during puberty, as well as social shifts during that time. The decline in life satisfaction following age 70 may be due to physical illnesses or poor physical performance, deteriorated health and diminished social contacts, including the deaths of loved ones, Bücker said.
Positive emotional states, however, continually decline from the age of nine until the age of 94. While negative emotional states fluctuated slightly between ages 9 and 22, then declined until age 60 before increasing again.
“Overall, the study indicated a positive trend over a wide period of life, if we look at life satisfaction and negative emotional states,” Bücker said, summarizing the results.
The researchers—who are from the German Sport University Cologne, Ruhr University Bochum, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the universities of Bern and Basel in Switzerland—examined the subjective well-being over the entire lifespans of 460,902 participants.
From that group, they pulled 443 samples and examined people’s descriptions of how they felt about themselves during different stages of their lives.
The findings were published in the journal Psychological Bulletin.