Declining Life Satisfaction and Happiness Among Young Adults in Six English-Speaking Countries

Abstract

We report eleven studies that show declines in life satisfaction and happiness among young adults in the last decade or so, with less uniform trends among older adults. We found consistent evidence for this for the U.S. in the recent sweeps of several micro data sets including the Behavioral Risk Factor Survey, the General Social Survey, and the American National Election Survey. In the U. S. life satisfaction rises with age. This is broadly confirmed in several other datasets including four from the European Commission across five other English-speaking countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland New Zealand and the UK. Declining wellbeing of the young was also found in the World Values Survey, the Global Flourishing Study and Global Minds. There is broad evidence across all of these English-speaking countries that happiness and life satisfaction since 2020 rise with age. In several of these surveys we also find that ill-being declines in age. The U-shape in wellbeing by age that used to exist in these countries is now gone, replaced by a crisis in wellbeing among the young.

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