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Life

12th Sep 2018

Turns out, there are TWO ages at which we feel happiest

Cathy Donohue

This is very specific and a little surprising too.

New research, collated by the Centre of Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and Political Science, says that there are two ages at which we feel happiest, and yes that’s the happiest EVER.

Apparently, you reach peak happiness at the grand old age of 23 but the good news is you get to revisit that again years later at 69.

To come up with these results, 23,000 people living in Germany, aged 17-85, were asked to rate their current life satisfaction and how they think they might feel about the same topic five years down the line.

Five years later, these people were asked to rate their happiness again with the result showing a U-shaped curve between the ages of 20 and 70, peaking at 23 and 69.

Researchers found that the U-shaped curve is because younger people have a tendency to overestimate how satisfied they will feel down the line while older people sometimes underestimate it.

Having asked around the Her table, no one predicted these ages but that said, they do make sense. 23 is when you’re just starting out in your chosen career, full of hopes and dreams and fresh-faced optimism while at 69, things have *hopefully* come full circle.

You can check out the study in full here.

Topics:

happy,women