Are Humans Happier Today Than 50 Years Ago?

The question of whether humans are happier today than 50 years ago defies simple answers because happiness trends vary dramatically by country, age group, and how you measure wellbeing. People living in 1957 were happier than people are today, and happiness levels have not reached those levels in the intervening 60 years, according to research. Although in 1957 life expectancies were lower, GDP was lower, more hours were worked in a typical week, and few households had central heating while less than half owned a television, levels of public happiness were at a height never reached again in the British post-war period.​

Yet analyzing 8 million books and 65 million newspaper articles reveals that people in the US are probably happier now than they’ve ever been, despite what you might think. This apparent contradiction reflects different methodologies, cultural contexts, and the complex relationship between objective living conditions and subjective wellbeing. When asked directly, Americans are less upbeat about life in 2017 where 41 percent of U.S. respondents feel life is worse today than 50 years ago compared to only 37 percent who think it’s better.​

The answer depends on where you live, how old you are, and what aspects of life you value most. For generations, life’s happiness curve looked the same where people were happiest as young adults, became progressively less happy until the age of 50, and then began to grow happier again. But that’s no longer the case according to a new study where today, people are unhappiest as young adults and grow happier as they age. Understanding whether humans are happier today requires examining these nuances rather than accepting simple narratives about progress inevitably improving wellbeing or romanticizing the past as universally better.​

Geographic Disparities in Happiness Trends

Happiness trends over the past 50 years vary dramatically by country reflecting economic trajectories and social changes specific to each nation. In Vietnam, 88 percent of people feel better off now than in 1967 when their country was torn apart by brutal conflict. India has made massive economic strides over the past five decades and nearly 7-in-10 people there feel they are better off in 2017. That optimism is common elsewhere in Asia, particularly in places that have undergone impressive economic transformations such as South Korea and Japan with 68 and 65 percent feeling better off respectively.​

Countries that have experienced rapid economic development and escaped poverty show clear increases in happiness over the past 50 years. The transformation from subsistence agriculture to modern economy, from war to peace, from poverty to prosperity generates genuine improvements in wellbeing that show up in happiness measures. For hundreds of millions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, life today is objectively and subjectively better than it was 50 years ago through material comfort, health, education, and opportunities that previous generations lacked.

In contrast, Western nations show stagnation or decline in happiness despite continued economic growth. In France, only 33 percent of people feel they are better off today than 50 years ago. In neighboring Italy, the mood is even gloomier still with only 23 percent feeling things are better today. Pew found that countries that are more upbeat about the state of their economies are more likely to say that life in 2017 is better than in 1967.​

The divergent trajectories suggest that absolute living standards matter tremendously for happiness when moving from poverty to middle income, but additional wealth beyond certain threshold produces diminishing returns to happiness while potentially creating new sources of unhappiness. The developing world is catching up in both prosperity and happiness while the developed world struggles with problems prosperity cannot solve.

The Relative Nature of Happiness

The report concluded that happiness is a relative concept where it depends on things like expectations and aspirations, and these have changed since Victorian times. If we have much higher aspirations now than a century ago, then the report suggests that this could be one reason why there seems to be a good deal of unhappiness around today. Our national happiness is like an adjustable spanner that we open and close to calibrate our experiences against our recent past, with little lasting memory for the triumphs and tragedies of our age.​

This adaptation mechanism explains why material improvements don’t automatically translate to sustained happiness increases. After the end of rationing in the 1950s national happiness was very high as were expectations for the future, but unfortunately things did not pan out as people might have hoped and national happiness fell for many years until the low-point of the Winter of Discontent. The gap between what people expected and what they got mattered more than the absolute living standards which continued improving through this period.​

Increases in national income do generate increases in national happiness but it takes a huge rise to have a noticeable effect at the national level. Money helps, but the effect is smaller than intuition suggests because people adapt to new income levels and compare themselves to others who also gained income. The hedonic treadmill means that improvements in living standards produce temporary happiness boosts that fade as people adapt to new circumstances and develop new reference points for comparison.​

The relative nature of happiness means that in societies with high inequality, many people feel unhappy despite absolute prosperity that would seem luxurious by historical standards. Comparison to contemporary peers matters more than comparison to ancestors, so knowing your great-grandparents lived without indoor plumbing doesn’t make you happy about your own modest apartment when you’re surrounded by others living in luxury.

Generational Reversal in Happiness Patterns

The traditional happiness curve where people start happy in youth, decline to midlife crisis around 50, then recover happiness in later years has reversed in recent generations. Today, young people are unhappiest while older people grow happier as they age. This represents profound shift with important implications. Young people are becoming less happy than older generations with gloomy young people pulling US and Western Europe down global happiness rankings.​

This reversal suggests that changes in modern life affect younger generations more severely than older ones who developed resilience and social connections before smartphone era. Young adults today face unique stressors including social media comparison, economic precarity despite education, climate anxiety, political polarization, and pandemic disruption of formative years. The optimism that used to characterize youth has been replaced by pessimism about future prospects despite living in objectively prosperous times.

While life satisfaction increased with age for each cohort, older birth cohorts especially people born between 1885 and 1925 started off with substantially lower wellbeing levels than cohorts who grew up during more prosperous times. The greater wellbeing of more recent cohorts could be the result of economic prosperity, increased educational opportunities, and expansion of social and public programs over the latter half of the 20th century. Yet these advantages haven’t translated to sustained happiness for young people in recent decades.​

In Central and Eastern Europe, the young are now as happy as in Western Europe, and among the old the gap between East and West is one half of what it was in 2006-10, though still large. The convergence in youth happiness across regions while older people maintain disparities suggests that global forces affecting young people transcend specific national circumstances, possibly through universal exposure to social media and digital culture.​

What Actually Drives Happiness Over Time

Research analyzing happiness over nearly 200 years reveals what factors most influence wellbeing at societal level. An increase in longevity of 1 year had the same effect on happiness as a 4.3% increase in GDP. Health and life expectancy contribute more to happiness than equivalent economic gains, suggesting that medical advances over past 50 years represent significant happiness improvement even if not captured in self-reported measures.​

One less year of war had the equivalent effect on happiness of a 30% rise in GDP. The relative peace most developed nations have enjoyed for past 50 years compared to the world wars, Cold War tensions, and Vietnam War represents massive happiness dividend. In post-war USA the lowest point of the index coincides with the Vietnam War and the evacuation of Saigon. The absence of major military conflicts in most developed nations since 1975 should theoretically boost happiness substantially.​

In post-war UK, the worst period for national happiness occurred around the appropriately named Winter of Discontent. Economic stagnation, labor unrest, and political dysfunction tanked happiness more than continued improvements in living standards helped. The stability and prosperity of subsequent decades should have increased happiness, yet subjective measures show more complex patterns.​

Harvard’s 80-year study on happiness proves that embracing community helps us live longer and be happier. The quality of relationships matters more than wealth or fame for long-term happiness. The decline in community connections, face-to-face relationships, extended family proximity, and institutional participation over past 50 years represents significant happiness cost that material improvements cannot offset. People have more consumer goods but fewer deep relationships producing net negative effect on wellbeing.​

Measurement Challenges and Interpretation

Different methodologies for measuring historical happiness produce different conclusions. Analyzing text from millions of books and newspaper articles creates happiness indices showing Americans are happier now than ever. This approach measures emotional content of published text which may reflect what was socially acceptable to publish rather than actual experienced happiness. The positivity in contemporary texts might indicate superficial optimism rather than genuine deep wellbeing.​

Survey data asking people to directly rate their happiness or compare current to past times produces different results, often showing decline or stagnation in developed nations. These self-reports capture subjective experience but are influenced by nostalgia, current mood, media narratives, and political attitudes. People’s assessments of whether life is better may reflect partisan views about current governments more than actual wellbeing changes.​

The complexity of measuring happiness across decades makes definitive answers impossible. Different measures capture different aspects of wellbeing and different populations show different trends. Older adults with secondary or higher education and those of higher social castes report higher life satisfaction than counterparts without formal education. Satisfaction with living arrangements, perceived discrimination, and self-rated health emerge as top three predictors of life satisfaction. These factors have changed differently for different demographic groups over 50 years.​

Your current reality might not seem like people are very happy, but people are just as happy today as they were 1000 years ago. This perspective suggests happiness is human constant relatively unaffected by material conditions. Alternatively, it’s because they are happier where things were indeed better by several objective measures and buying power alone should be convincing enough. These contradictory views reflect the difficulty of making objective assessments about subjective experiences across time.​

The Paradox of Progress

The fundamental paradox is that by nearly every objective measure, life is better now than 50 years ago. People live longer, are healthier, have more education, more material comfort, more rights and freedoms, more entertainment options, more communication ability, and more opportunities than previous generations could imagine. Yet subjective happiness hasn’t increased proportionally to these improvements and in some populations and places has actually declined.

This paradox suggests that happiness depends on factors beyond material conditions that policy makers focus on. The social fabric, sense of community, quality of relationships, meaning and purpose, realistic expectations, and psychological resilience matter as much or more than GDP, lifespan, or consumer goods. The past 50 years have seen dramatic improvements in material wellbeing but deterioration in social connections, community strength, stability, and sense of shared purpose.

Whether humans are happier today than 50 years ago depends entirely on which humans you’re asking and what aspects of happiness you’re measuring. Those who escaped poverty through economic development are clearly happier. Young people in developed nations are clearly less happy. Older people show mixed patterns. Average happiness may have increased globally while declining in specific wealthy nations whose populations had high baseline happiness 50 years ago.

The question itself reveals our assumptions about progress and happiness. We expect material improvements to produce happiness improvements and feel confused when they don’t. Understanding that happiness is relative, socially constructed, dependent on relationships more than things, and subject to adaptation helps explain why 50 years of unprecedented material progress hasn’t produced 50 years of happiness gains. The answer to whether humans are happier today isn’t simple yes or no but rather “it depends” on circumstances that vary dramatically across the globe and across generations living through the same historical moment.