The Mid-Life Dip in Well-Being: We find remarkably strong and consistent evidence across countries of statistically significant and non-trivial U-shapes in age with and without socio-economic controls

The Mid-Life Dip in Well-Being: a Critique. David G. Blanchflower & Carol L. Graham. Social Indicators Research, Oct 19 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-021-02773-w

Abstract: A number of studies—including our own—find a mid-life dip in well-being. Yet several papers in the psychology literature claim that the evidence of a U-shape is "overblown" and if there is such a thing that any such decline is "trivial". Others have claimed that the evidence of a U-shape "is not as robust and generalizable as is often assumed," or simply "wrong." We identify 409 studies, mostly published in peer reviewed journals that find U-shapes that these researchers apparently were unaware of. We use data for Europe from the Eurobarometer Surveys (EB), 1980–2019; the Gallup World Poll (GWP), 2005–2019 and the UK's Annual Population Survey, 2016–2019 and the Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey of August 2021, to examine U-shapes in age in well-being. We find remarkably strong and consistent evidence across countries of statistically significant and non-trivial U-shapes in age with and without socio-economic controls. We show that studies cited by psychologists claiming there are no U-shapes are in error; we reexamine their data and find differently. The effects of the mid-life dip we find are comparable to major life events such as losing a spouse or becoming unemployed. This decline is comparable to half of the unprecedented fall in well-being observed in the UK in 2020 and 2021, during the Covid19 pandemic and lockdown, which is hardly “inconsequential” as claimed.

Discussion

An early psychology literature argued that there was no relationship between well-being and age. This appears to have been based on studies that included a handful of people with tiny sample sizes. Even where there was evidence of a U-shape, it was denied in the literature. We reworked a few of these studies using same data and showed there were U-shapes, and their scale was large and comparable to the loss of a spouse, or a job. Some studies have failed to find U-shapes but generally they have been based on small sample sizes,

In addition to our findings of U-shapes using life satisfaction data from the Eurobarometer we also looked at Cantril's ladder of life satisfaction in the Gallup World Poll data and found U-shapes with and without controls for an additional 64 non-European countries. We found similar U-shapes for the UK from the Annual Population Surveys.

Two more recent papers (Galambos et al., 2020, 2021) suggested there was little evidence of U-shapes based on a literature review of 28 papers. We showed that that the authors had misclassified many of these paper's findings. Indeed, after misclassifications have been accounted for and ineligible studies dropped, B&G found that there were zero that didn't find any evidence of U-shapes. Of the 28 papers 21 found U-shapes and three had mixed evidence while four had to be excluded as they did not set the criteria set by GKJL1; of note is that GKJL2 did not dispute any of these re-classifications.

We have also identified an astonishing 387 additional papers that the authors had ignored that did find U-shapes, making 403 in total. Indeed, we count a total of 373 published in a vast array of peer-reviewed journals in English, including 73 in this journal alone, that find U-shapes, which was the main criterion the authors set for examination. When this was pointed out to the authors by us in an earlier paper (Blanchflower & Graham, 2021a) the authors claimed that they did not set out to do an exhaustive review because they "wanted to show support for the view that not all researchers find the U shapes". Hence, their analysis is advocacy not science. There is a U-shape in well-being in midlife.

On the basis of this evidence, it is clearly inappropriate to dismiss the literature on the U-curve as “overblown” or the scale of the effects as trifling, inconsequential or even "trivial". We have shown that the effects of the mid-life dip are comparable to major life events like losing a spouse or a job. We show that the drop from teenage years to the midlife low is about half the size of the unprecedented drop in life satisfaction that occurred during the COVID19 pandemic.

Beyond being empirically interesting, there are implications for substantial parts of the world’s population. These dips in well-being are associated with higher levels of depression, including chronic depression, difficulty sleeping, and even suicide. In the U.S., deaths of despair are most likely to occur in the middle-aged years, and the patterns are robustly associated with unhappiness and stress. Across countries chronic depression and suicide rates peak in midlife. The mid-life dip in well-being is robust to within person analysis, also exists with the prescribing of anti-depressants and it extends beyond humans. The evidence comes from both longitudinal and cross-section data, which complement one another, as noted in a recent report by The Lancet’s COVID-19 Commission Mental Health Task Force. It remains puzzling then why some psychologists continue to suggest that well-being is unrelated to age.

Based on the significant evidence we present, the decline in mid-life well-being seems real and consequential and has robust linkages to other serious markers of ill-being. The mid-life dip is real, it applies to most of the world’s population, excepting countries in which it is very difficult to age—such as those with very high levels of absolute poverty and conflict and low levels of life expectancy. It links to behaviors and outcomes that merit the attention of scholars and policymakers alike. These include rising rates of despair and reported pain among the middle-aged in many rich countries and associated premature mortality due to despair-related deaths, and some similar if less well documented patterns in developing economies. Among other things, more public awareness of how common this mid-life dip is might help those navigating its worst manifestations to make it through to a happier and longer life.

The overwhelming evidence from four hundred and nine papers, and counting, as well as the evidence presented here, support the conclusion that there is a midlife low in well-being. This is among the most striking, persistent and consistent patterns in social science.