The glee party.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Unplugged - Happiness - Essay

After two years of looking at economic graphs of precipitous, acute-angle lines in black-to-red free fall, it was reassuring to see the kindlier, rounded u-bend graph in a recent Economist feature, "The Joy of Growing Old." In data-mining Gross National Happiness surveys worldwide, statisticians hypothesize that after mid-life crises, people actually get happier as they get older.

Since The Economist 's graph looked like some old crusty pipe under the bathroom sink, I suspected the editors were just tossing us geezer-boomers an it-gets-better bone. I almost didn't read the article. But I couldn't sleep because of my aching, arthritic shoulder, so I donned my drugstore reading glasses, which made the font comfortably large, and plunged in.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

For years, economists have been asking, "Can money buy happiness?" But in a deep recession, that would be kind of awkward, if not downright rude. (Economists should have been asking how Wall Street can get away with grand larceny, but you'll have to go see Inside Job to find the answer to that one.) Instead, economists asked the even more philosophical question, "What is happiness?"

It turns out that gender, personality, external circumstances, and age are the main hedonic determinants. Women are slightly happier than men. They have to be happier because Ayn Rand wrecked the curve. Neurotics are less happy than extroverts. See John McCain. Relational, educational, and health circumstances affect happiness. Educated people are happier, especially after they pay off their student loans. People aged seventy rate themselves happier than thirty-year-olds.

After much study, psychologists came to the conclusion that increased contentment in older people might actually result not from external variables but from internal changes. An inside job. One Stanford professor of psychology thinks that since older people see their age cohorts die and confront evidence of their own mortality, they are better able to live in the present and manage their emotions.

The article concludes with the...