What Shape Does Happiness Really Take Over the Lifespan?

"Alive for decades in the public's imagination, the midlife crisis was an idea floated by a popular writer in the late 1970s that quickly became entrenched as fact. One after another, dozens of researchers who study development in adulthood peered through their data sets to try to validate the idea, only to conclude that it's a myth. It might be entertaining to think about going out and having a wild time in your 40s due to midlife malaise,"

"Not long after this paper was circulated, adult development researchers began to poke holes in the original dataset used by the authors. The U shape was specific to certain countries (Western, industrialized) and so small in magnitude, though "statistically significant," to be more like a wobble than a U. The happiness scale went from 0 to 10, but the "U" covered only a tiny portion of somewhere in the low 7s."

"After over a decade of defending the U shape, Dartmouth College's Blanchflower, along with University College London colleague Alex Bryon (2025), released a paper declaring the U-shape at last to have "vanished." Critics in the field never believed in its existence, so its disappearance didn't seem like much of a shock. In fact, one of the pillars of the argument against its supposed universality was the fact that"

Longstanding belief in a universal midlife crisis lacks empirical support; multiple adult-development studies find it to be a myth rather than an inevitable stage. Early findings suggesting a U-shaped happiness curve were largely driven by limited datasets and small effect sizes concentrated in some Western, industrialized countries. The apparent U was narrow on a 0 to 10 happiness scale and resembled a minor wobble. After years of debate, researchers reanalyzed data and concluded that the U-shape has vanished, with newer evidence indicating an upward trend in happiness across adulthood. Personal fulfillment appears linked to following an individualized life path rather than expecting a midlife slump.

Read at Psychology Today