Happiness is a grey nomad

Grey nomads in Australia are among the happiest adults in the Western world, a new study has found.

The study into the ‘happiness wave', conducted by Dr Tony Beatton of Queensland University of Technology and Professor Paul Frijters of The University of Queensland, has revealed how happiness changes over a lifetime for people living in Australia, Germany and Britain.

“We all strive towards happiness, but we wanted to find out at what point in life we actually reach this goal,” said Dr Beatton.

Collecting data from more than 60,000 people in Australia, Britain and Germany, the pair found people were happiest as they entered retirement age (55-75), and most miserable close to death (80-90).

For a representative 18-year-old with a happiness level of 7 on a 10-point scale, the peak happiness age was found to be 65 in Australia, reaching 7.3, compared with Britain (7.2 at aged 70), and Germany (7 at 65).

“Life in old age is clearly relatively better in Australia than the UK, perchance because of the better weather, more generous public pensions, and more space for the grey nomads to roam,” he said.

After happiness peaks at age 65 in Australia, the study found it then drops increasingly fast as death approaches, with happiness levels at 6.6 at the age of 90 and over.

“Our interpretation of these findings is that individuals over 55 no longer have unrealistic expectations of what their life will be like and simply enjoy their reasonable health and wealth, leading to a marked surge in happiness. As their health starts to deteriorate after 75, their happiness plunges,” said Dr Beatton.

The same study has debunked the idea of the middle-age blues, blaming an over-representation of unhappy respondents in previous surveys.

Published in the Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation, the study considered figures from three surveys: the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey of 16,000 people in Australia, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) of 25,000 in England and the German Socioeconomic Panel Survey (GSOEP) of 20,600 people in Germany.