happiness is changing shape. For years, the curve of people’s happiness resembled a U, that is, it tended to be high in youth, to decline in the middle age and again ascending when you aging.
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But it is no longer the case. The curve has begun to flatten, now it seems more like a J, that is one of the main conclusions of the global flowering study, a collaborative research project between Harvard University and the University of Baylor that has just published its first results in the scientific journal Nature Mental Health.
The “flowering,” the authors say, is “the relative achievement of a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good, including the contexts in which that person lives.” Hence the study, led by Tyler Vanderweele (Harvard) and Byron Johnson (Baylor), Explore six fundamental dimensions of well -being: happiness, physical and mental health, sense and purpose, character and virtue, social relations and financial security.
The data mainly collected by the Gallup agency in 2023, from surveys to more than 200,000 people in more than 20 countries, also revealed that, on average, young adults between 18 and 29 years physical and mental healthself -perception of its character, search for purpose in life, quality of their relationships and financial security.
The study also found that, in general terms, what makes people happier has not only to do with material factors such as income or employment, but with deeply human aspects such as social relations, spirituality, vital sense and mental health. Thus, well -being and flowering are related to strong links, practices of some form of faith or community and feeling part of something bigger than themselves.
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“The panorama is quite bleak,” Tyler J. Vanderweele, lead author of the study and director of the Harvard University Prosperity program told the New York Times. The findings, according to him, raise an important question and it is whether we are putting enough for the well -being of young people, because for a long time, young adults lived that stage of their life with carefreeness and that period was associated with unlimited opportunities and few obligations. Now, the study has revealed that it has more fantasy than reality.
“The global flowering study and these initial results provide fundamental knowledge to promote social welfare. Understand the distribution of social welfare worldwide and by demographic group helps us understand who needs help and how. It allows us to identify the groups to which interventions or policies could be directed to improve well -being,” says the authors.
