The latest World Happiness Report 2024 reveals an interesting trend – that older people are happier and just as positive as the under-30s.

Good memories

The report, which covers more than 140 nations, says there is a growing strand of research suggesting that as people age, they attach more importance to remembering the positive aspects of their lives, and less to remembering the negative. 

“This could help to explain why life evaluations rise with age, especially in countries where this transfer of attention is more likely. These are likely to be where a larger fraction of the population has the basic necessities of life,” the report says.

A slip in the rankings

The World Happiness Report 2024 is published by the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre and is a partnership between it, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the World Happiness Report’s Editorial Board.

Each year it reveals the happiest countries in the world. This year NZ dropped from the 10^th to 11^th position.

However, beneath that ranking is a considerable variance between the happiness of different age brackets. Kiwis aged under 30 were ranked 27^th, while the 60 plus age group came in sixth. 

Interpreting the results

These results vary compared to many other parts of the world, where there is generally a U-shaped happiness curve. Often happiness is high among the young, dips in middle age, and then rises again for the over-60s.

Take control of your retirement income

But the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (NANZ), were the only countries where the young were more unhappy than the old. While the causes are not clear, the report says they are believed to involve a mix of generational and age effects.

Think positive

Part of the study also looks at the positive and negative emotions experienced by respondents. Typically, around the world, experiencing positive emotions such as laughter, enjoyment, and doing interesting things, are more often recorded in the youngest age groups, and gradually less often at higher ages.

“The only exception is in the NANZ group of countries, which show a U-shape in age (for positive emotions), with those 60+ having about the same frequency of positive emotions as those under 30,” the report shows.

The overall report results also reinforce the psychological finding that the existence of positive emotions matters more than the absence of negative ones when predicting either longevity, or resistance to the common cold.