New research has suggested that a person is happiest after 70 years of age, as long as he or she enjoys good health, has sufficient income and is not lonely.
Lewis Wolpert, the 81-year-old emeritus professor of biology at University College London, highlights the conclusions in a new book entitled ‘You're Looking Very Well’. He said, “What emerges is that people in their teens and twenties tend to be averagely happy but this declines steadily until early middle age…But from the mid-forties, people tend to become ever more cheerful, perhaps reaching a maximum in their late seventies or eighties.”
A study of 341,000 people by the National Academy of Sciences in America showed that overall enjoyment of life tended to decline slowly throughout early adulthood, rising again from around the late forties or early fifties to reach a maximum around the age of 85. But there are differences between sexes and between rich and the poor say researchers. “More affluent individuals have fewer depressive symptoms, greater life satisfaction, better quality of life and lower levels of loneliness,” added the study.
Andrew Steptoe, professor of psychology at University College London, said elderly people today benefit from better health and opportunities now than 30 years ago, adding that good health and a secure income were “very important” in old age.
Research also indicates that, while ageing can cause the weakening of some abilities such as mathematics, others such as language and decision making improve as the brain matures. In addition, psychologists believe that in old age people become more selective with how they use their time, focusing more on doing things they enjoy and cutting out parts of life that make them unhappy.
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