The Guardian – Jonathan Rauch, author of The Happiness Curve, was relieved to find an explanation for his gloom – academics say adulthood happiness is U-shaped

“Academics have found increasing evidence that happiness through adulthood is U-shaped – life satisfaction falls in our 20s and 30s, then hits a trough in our late 40s before increasing until our 80s. Forget the saying that life begins at 40 – it’s 50 we should be looking toward. Rauch, a senior fellow at the US thinktank the Brookings Institution, was so relieved to have found an explanation for the gloom that hit him and, he believed, many others in middle age that he became evangelical about spreading the word. He has written a book, The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50 (out in the US 1 May and UK 14 June), which includes personal stories, the latest data and illuminating interviews with economists, psychologists and neuroscientists…”