The life-affirming reason why happiness is up 25 percent for older people since the pandemic

A 2023 report on Axios claimed that people were happier during the pandemic because everyone was kinder. Axios reporter and editor Rebecca Falconer cites the 2024 World Happiness Report and notes, "'Benevolence to others has risen roughly 25% since the pandemic began,' John Helliwell, a professor of economics at the University of British Columbia and a co-editor of the report, told CNN. 'Even during these difficult years, positive emotions have remained twice as prevalent as negative ones, and feelings of positive social support twice as strong as those of loneliness.'"

With that in mind, this month we hit the five-year mark since the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. Though we know the pandemic has affected everyone worldwide in some way or another, we're just now seeing research suggest which age groups were most affected mentally: English people over 50.

The study, entitled, "Recovery of psychological well-being following the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal analysis of the English longitudinal study of aging," was published in the peer reviewed-scientific journal Aging and Mental Health and posted to the National Library of Medicine. In it, nearly 4,000 people over the age of 50 living in England were examined for 11 years by a research team at University College London.

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The study's objective was "to assess changes in positive psychological well-being and depression before, during, and after the pandemic in older people, and evaluate whether mental well-being had returned to pre-pandemic levels after the pandemic." It also tested whether the responses received varied by age, gender and socioeconomic factors like living arrangements and economic resources.

In terms of method, they shared that mental health was measured by three assessments of positive well-being: "affective, eudaemonic, and evaluative."

Affective well-being refers to "the frequency and intensity with which people experience positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). PA and NA encompass both specific emotions and general mood states. Affective well-being is typically measured by asking people to rate the extent to which they experienced different affective states." In other words, people are asked to rate the strength and prevalence of their feelings over a given range of time.

Eudaemonic well-being refers to growth, self-fulfillment, and "flourishing long-term." It's the opposite of hedonism, which we might think of as impulsive or what makes someone happy "in the moment." On PositivePsychology.com, Anna Katharina Schaffner, Ph.D., references Aristotle, who believed that "the eudaemonic life is one of virtuous activity, exercised in accordance with reason. It is also oriented toward excellence."

Lastly, Evaluative well-being is essentially a "reflective assessment of an individual's overall satisfaction with life."

Participants were asked to reflect on their overall satisfaction with life. Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

What was surprising was that middle-aged people, in particular, seemed to have the biggest bounce-back after the pandemic, particularly in terms of eudaemonic well-being. According to a piece published by Taylor and Francis Group that quotes the aforementioned study, people in their 50s actually reported being less happy than those older than them before the pandemic (say, 60s and 70s). "This finding may reflect unique challenges faced by people in their 50s, including midlife stressors such as financial responsibilities, caregiving roles, and work pressures."

However, "they also showed greater recovery after the pandemic, suggesting a good degree of resilience or an ability to adapt."

The study also found that, though depression has usually been higher in lower-income people before the pandemic, affluent people had a harder time adapting to the lockdown. "But perhaps counterintuitively, the psychological well-being of wealthier participants fell more than that of the poorer cohort during the pandemic itself; they showed larger decreases in happiness, eudaimonic well-being, and life satisfaction."

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And in other good news? In a 2024 Axios article, markets correspondent Emily Peck explains, "This all comes down to connecting with others; Americans age 60 and over are less lonely and feel more socially connected than their younger peers."