Although there are conflicting opinions, most studies on happiness in recent decades agreed on one point: happiness tends to be very high in youth, decline during middle age, and then rise again in later life. A “U” shaped trend, in short. The problem today is that we are observing a change in the trend of happiness.
The “Global Flourish Study” research published in April 2025 in Nature Mental Health strongly questioned this model. According to this research, in many European countries the happiness of young adults is falling dramatically, making this curve look more like a “J” shape, low in the initial part (the one that corresponds to young people) and high in the final part (the one that corresponds to the elderly). The first published results show that in Europe, on average, young adults aged 18 to 29 are facing difficulties in terms of happiness, personal fulfillment and mental health.
In this article we will look at where the idea of the “U” comes from, why we might share this pattern even with chimpanzees, and what the latest global data suggests.
Happiness has a “U” shape: the studies of Blanchflower and Oswald
The idea that happiness follows a “U” shape throughout life is not a recent one. In 2008, economist David Blanchflower, together with Andrew Oswald, published a study based on data collected from over 500,000 people in the United States and Europe. The two scholars discovered that, regardless of variables such as gender, income, education or nationality, perceived happiness tended to decline during middle age, and then rise again after age 50.
As good economists, Blanchflower and Oswald were initially interested in demonstrating the relationship between money and happiness, but ended up demonstrating that age was an even more relevant variable. Also in 2008 they found confirmation of a U-shaped trend in 70 different countries, including some very different from each other, such as Japan, Brazil, Nigeria and Sweden. In 2020 they further confirmed their theories, finding the same trend in 145 countries, of which 109 were developing, strengthening the hypothesis that it is a universal model. So universal that the “U” curve is not just limited to humans.
In fact, in 2012, the same authors analyzed the trend in happiness of 508 great apes, mainly chimpanzees and orangutans, reported by experts who knew them closely. A similar curve was also found in these animals, with a decline in well-being halfway through their life expectancy. This suggests that the “midlife crisis” may also have a biological basis, not just a social or cultural one.
The curve is changing: what the Global Flourishing Study tells us
If the U-shaped curve seemed constant for years, today the data tells us a different story. According to the Global Flourishing Study (GFS), published in Nature Mental Health in April 2025, the well-being of young adults is declining in many European countries and also in the United States. The result is that the initial part of the curve is lowering, making it more like a “J” or a straight line that is lower at the beginning and higher at the end.
The GFS is an ongoing international study. It involves over 200,000 participants in 22 countries on six continents. The goal is to observe the progress of broad well-being – not just happiness, but also mental and physical health, quality of relationships, financial security, character and spirituality – over five years.
Initial data show that, in many high-income countries – such as the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Sweden – the well-being reported by young people tends to be lower than that reported by older people. In the United States, for example, the average well-being score is 6.36 (on a scale of 0 to 10) among 18-29 year olds, versus 7.68 among 60-69 year olds. However, the same trend is not observed everywhere. In many low-middle income countries, such as India, the Philippines and Thailand, however, young people say they are happier than older people.
The authors of the research underline that it is still too early to say that there is a new stable model that describes the relationship between happiness and age. Only the data we will have in the future will be able to clarify the issue better.
In any case, continuing to study happiness – or, more generally, the well-being of individuals – is important for many reasons. Several studies show that those who feel more satisfied with their lives tend to have better health and live longer. For this reason, more and more governments consider happiness a variable to take into account in political decisions, like economic or social indicators. Yet, despite its centrality, research on these topics is still limited, also due to the difficulty of collecting reliable data on a large scale and analyzing it in a useful way to guide public choices.
