Why are older people happier than younger people?

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People born before 1965 are on average happier than those born after 1980, according to the World Happiness Report 2024.

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Switzerland is among the happiest nations in the world, according to a new study. But life satisfaction is declining among younger generations. swissinfo.ch spoke to economics professor Mathias Binswanger to find out how to interpret this observation.

This content was published on

April 18, 2024 – 09:05

Switzerland is the ninth happiest country in the world. This is what the World Happiness Report 2024External link, recently published, which studies how people in more than 140 countries rate their own happiness. In another recent survey, published by YouGov Switzerland, 73% of those questioned said they were “very satisfied” with their life.

However, behind these positive data lies another reality. According to World Happiness Report, young people’s happiness has fallen over the past fifteen years, particularly in wealthy countries in Western Europe and North America. People born before 1965 are on average happier than those born since 1980. Young people now make up the unhappiest age group in the United States, a country that dropped out of the list of 20 happiest nations.

In Switzerland, the YouGov survey shows that young people are particularly faced with mental health problems. Surveys published after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic revealed that up to 30% of young people say they are worse off than before the pandemic.

Author of the book Die Tretmühlen des Glücks (The treadmills of happiness) and professor of economics at the University of Applied Sciences of North-West Switzerland, Mathias Binswanger provides some explanations.

swissinfo.ch: Switzerland regularly ranks among the top ten countries in the world happiness rankings. What is his secret?

Mathias Binswanger: The first question is whether this is actually true. When we visit Switzerland, we don’t just meet happy and smiling people.

In general, when people are asked about their happiness, they give mostly positive answers. This is called social desirability bias. An aspect that plays a big role in Switzerland, because we have a lot of advantages. We live in pleasant conditions and people say they are happy because they are supposed to be.

Of course, there are also objective reasons why Switzerland might be one of the happiest countries in the world. One of them is material well-being, which is very high in Switzerland. Another is security, particularly the security of being able to keep your job.

The last important point is democracy. Our system provides for initiatives and referendums that allow the population to suggest changes or oppose government proposals. Which also applies at the local level. For example, if your neighbor wants to build something, you have the right to object. In Switzerland we have the possibility of exerting a certain influence on the authorities, which is not the case in many countries.

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Does democracy make you happier?

This content was published on

Mar 10, 2017

swissinfo.ch: Does direct democracy make you happier? Isabelle Stadelmann: Direct democracy has many positive aspects, but I find it hard to believe that it plays a determining role in individual happiness. Considered from a scientific perspective, the results of the studyExternal link to which you are probably referring are not really conclusive. Based on this study, we…

read more Does democracy make you happier?

For the first time, the authors of World Happiness Report had enough data to examine changes in happiness levels across different age groups. Are you surprised to find that older people are generally happier than younger people?

No, this is something we have known for a long time. There is a U-shaped curve that can be observed throughout life. People are relatively happy when they are very young, but this happiness declines quickly. People are expected to have careers and reach certain milestones in life, and often they have the dual burden of working and raising their children. So they don’t have time to do what they love.

Mathias Binswanger

After age 50, happiness begins to increase again. People aged 65 and over are in fact the happiest, in Switzerland as in most developed countries.

Can we expect today’s younger generations to also follow the U-shaped curve throughout their lives?

This is a currently hotly debated question. The previous generation was very work-oriented, so retirement opened up new opportunities for them. Especially now that people can live longer in relatively good health. It is not certain that the next generation will have the same experience, as they already have many opportunities to reduce professional burdens before reaching retirement age. In the new generation, people work part-time, change jobs more often and travel more.

Even if the picture is not exactly the same, the trend will undoubtedly continue. Indeed, the current level of stress is still relatively high and its reduction observed as people age will probably continue in the future.

Are our ideas of what makes us happy just different depending on our age group?

Previous generations always had a clear goal in life. They wanted to live better than their parents and for their children to have an even better life. There was therefore the common goal of increasing material well-being.

But today’s young people have grown up with a very high level of material wealth. Why would they strive to acquire even more goods when they know that this is not the key factor for a happier life? The question is what will make them happy. It is quite difficult to answer this question. Happiness depends on many things.

In November 2022, the RTS health magazine 36.9 took stock of the mental health of young people in Switzerland:

Yes, like social interactions. THE World Happiness Report indicates that, in all regions of the world, older people feel more socially supported and less lonely than younger generations, although they have less frequent real-world interactions with all social groups except neighbors .

Loneliness is a major problem for older people. The main problem for this generation is that social life is disappearing. In Switzerland, for example, in most bars and restaurants in the countryside, there was this institution of Stammtisch (regulars table) where people met every day. These habits made it possible to maintain social life. But that quickly disappears.

Today we have to make a lot more effort to meet people. And young people who want to shine on social media feel like they are harming their image if they appear eager to meet other people [dans la vie réelle].

Happiness rankings are all well and good, but do they have any value for politics?

I see value in them because they emphasize an aspect of life that ultimately is more important than GDP. Ultimately, we all want to live a good and happy life. Governments cannot directly take measures to make people happy. But they can set parameters that promote happiness. For example, the layout of a city can have an impact on well-being. Do people have access to green spaces where they live and can they easily meet other people?

On the one hand, these rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. On the other hand, taking into account material well-being alone gives a distorted vision of reality. The important things in life cannot be measured. Rankings help keep the debate going on issues that might be important to our happiness.

Text proofread and verified by Balz Rigendinger, translated from English by Mary Vacharidis / op