ABSTRACT
The years since the Great Recession have brought increasing concern, in countries all over the world, of declines in mental health and well-being. Globally, chronic depression and suicide rates peak in midlife. In the United States, deaths of despair are most likely to occur in these years, and the patterns are robustly associated with unhappiness and stress. A less-known relationship also exists between well-being and longevity among the elderly, particularly for those over age 70. In this chapter, we analyze several data sets for the United States, provide extensive evidence on middle-age patterns and how they differ between the married and unmarried, and review new work on the elderly. The relationship between well-being and ageing has a robust association with trends that can ruin lives and shorten life spans. It applies to much of the world’s population and links to behaviors and outcomes that merit the attention of scholars and policymakers alike.
