Millennials, you've got a surprise coming - the midlife crisis exists

This month, two UK economists presented statistical proof for the existence of the midlife crisis.

In a survey of 1.3 million people across 51 countries, they found that people report a measurable decline in happiness, starting in their 30s and continuing until around age 50, when they started to feel satisfied with their lives again.

"We're seeing this U-shape, this psychological dip, over and over again. There is definitely a midlife low," said Andrew Oswald, co-author of the study. Oswald's co-author, David Blanchflower, adds: "I don't know why some psychologists say it doesn't exist. It's blindingly obvious. All we did was plot the data points."

The very idea of a midlife crisis originated in the early 1960s with a Canadian psychologist named Elliott Jaques. He was studying the creative habits of 310 famous artists such as Mozart, Raphael and Gaugin when he noticed a common trait: When the artists entered their mid-30s, their creative output waned. Some became depressed. A few committed suicide.

Jaques then observed essentially the same pattern among his own clients. As people approached middle age, many of them became acutely aware that their lives were finite and, as a result, reported an increasing fear that they might not achieve their goals.

In other words, life looks great to 20-year-olds, less rosy for 30-year-olds and borderline bleak for people from ages 40 to 50. And yes, both men and women - menopausal or otherwise - experience the dip.

Oswald and Blanchflower's dip might not indicate the existential angst Jaques theorised in the 1960s. It may instead be a general side effect of contemporary adulthood. The dip occurs during people's prime working years. It's also the time period when most of them marry, form families, get mortgages and possibly experience unplanned shocks such as divorce or unemployment.

If anything, the dip recorded by Oswald and Blanchflower may simply be the statistical proof of what millennials are only starting to learn: "adulting" is hard.

- Bloomberg