Are You A 49 Year Old Man? Welcome to the Unhappiest Year of Your Life!

A new study of half a million Americans and Europeans concludes that people are less happy in middle age than when they are younger or older.

David Blanchflower of Dartmouth and Andrew Oswald of England's Warwick University wanted to look deeper into recent research that indicates that happiness is U-shaped: higher in young adulthood and old age than in middle age.

They used the results from two broad surveys to remove the influences of household income, education level, marital status, employment status, year of birth (since some people are born in happier times than others), and other factors.

They deliberately ignored health, which other studies have shown to be a major contributor to happiness.

For American men, they showed a definite U-shaped pattern with the average least-happy year age being 49.5. For American women it was 45.1.

They found a similar pattern for European men and women.

Although it's difficult to convert the results back to an understandable measure of happiness, they say that the decrease in happiness from 20 to 45 has about one-third the (un)happiness impact of unemployment.

They also believe that the data shows that successive American generations, from 1900 on, have become less happy. Europeans, by contrast, have been getting happier since the 1950s.

There is some good news. If you have more income, more education, or are married, you're likely to be happier than someone else your age who does not have those advantages.