If you’re 34, watch out: Tom Hanks says 35 is the worst age. Why ask Hanks – delightful as he seems – as opposed to, say, the highly qualified global community of happiness psychologists and social scientists? Because he’s got a film out, duh – Here, which required him to be rejuvenated to various ages, including his dread mid-30s. “Your metabolism stops, gravity starts tearing you down, your bones start wearing off [and] you stand differently,” Hanks told Entertainment Tonight. “You no longer are able to spring up off a couch.”
This is such a movie star answer. Hanks’ gripe is physical decline and yes, when your face, body and spring-off-a-couch-ability are how your worth is gauged, feeling that you’re physically degenerating must open up an existential abyss. For civilians, he’s wrong though: it’s 47.2. That’s when the US National Bureau of Economic Research concluded human unhappiness peaks. That finding in 2020 reinforced previous research on the “U-shaped happiness curve”: we start happy, wellbeing bottoms out at about 50, then we perk up again. The U-curve has been challenged, but seems robust; a 2021 review found “remarkably strong and consistent evidence across countries” of U-shaped happiness trajectories.
