Happiness - where are you on the U?

Present Tense:A report this week came to the conclusion that middle age is, on average, the worst age. Across the US and western Europe, especially, people in their 40s are least happy with their lot. The mid-life crisis, it turns out, is the crisis.

But we know that already. Enough novels, plays, comedy sketches, and country and western songs have reinforced the stereotype. But what was more interesting in this report from the University of Warwick is how things improve. Life doesn't continue on a downward slope. The graph doesn't sag like the skin. Instead, as people move into old age, they feel happier about their lives. Which is revolutionary, because, in a society obsessed with putting off ageing - with reversing it, with ignoring it whenever possible - it suggests that we should instead embrace it.

The researchers describe a U-shaped curve in terms of people's personal happiness, with the trough coming as they hit their 40s.

Unfortunately, it doesn't include data from anyone younger than 20, otherwise it might have been a W-shaped curve. The teenage years are particularly difficult as teenagers have little experience and no context in which to place life's troubles, peer pressure is at its greatest, and everything is compounded by a raging flood of hormones and the barking of adults whose greatest fear is that all they want to do is release the floodgates. If teenagers' attitudes had been included, it's possible it would have been a W-shaped curve.

Understandably, the survey - which used interviews with 500,000 people across 80 countries - shows up a lot of happy twentysomethings.

It's easy to see why. Life for them is all about ambition and potential. And it's easy to see why it can get a bit grim a couple of decades later, when the frustrating reality kicks in. It's during our 40s, it seems, that many of us realise that we have been lied to by a society that tells every child that they can achieve anything they put their minds to. It is here that it becomes quite clear that the bulk of us can't, but only ever come to realise this crushing reality too late.

Interestingly, the Warwick survey says that in the US women have the crisis about a decade earlier than men, which may be a clever tactic to get it out of the way early and get on with enjoying life despite having a grumpy partner.

The news that older Irish are happy is not new. In the Irish Times/TNS mrbi survey in 2006, nine out of 10 over-50s said they were hapy with their life. Maybe that could be partially explained by how the demographic had grown up with very different expectations. They mightn't have predicted that they would be so much healthier and wealthier than their parents. They didn't realise, for instance, when they bought their houses that they would eventually double as gold mines.

The researchers have some theories. It may be because over-50s have "quelled their unfeasible aspirations" and have learned to adapt to their strengths and weaknesses. It may also be a result of queered statistics, because "cheerful people systematically live longer than the miserable, for reasons not currently understood". Or, they might be happier for the rather straightforward reason that they've seen friends die and realise that still being alive is, in itself, a bit of a bonus.

As someone who is still only an expert in unfeasible aspirations, I don't have much to offer by way of insight into why older people are happier. Ironically, though, it may have something to do with the fact that ageing isn't what it used to be. Youth, in a loose form at least, has been extended, so that sixtysomethings now are perhaps a decade "younger" than the previous generation, in terms of both health and attitudes.

Whatever the reason, it does point to the conclusion that society has got ageing all wrong. We dread it, are disgusted by it, spend large sums of money trying to avoid it. Younger people spend too much time presuming it will never happen, while middle-aged folks dread the fact they can't avoid it. And, as people do age, they find themselves increasingly shunted out of a culture interested only in the young.

Yet, it is increasingly obvious that they have a secret to happiness.

Young people may be happy because they don't have to carry responsibility, but older people are happy because they've shouldered it.

So, it all goes to suggest that, rather than fight ageing, rather than fear it and kick against it, we should relax into it. That, in the end, we might just have the time of our life.

Although, the middle-aged offer a lesson too - which is not to get your hopes up too much.