[imagesource:  Ubi Desperare Nescio]

Are you getting itchy feet, and thinking about going on a journey of self-discovery?

You’re either a 20-something wannabe yoga instructor (the market is saturated, stop going to Bali on holiday and passing it off as a learning experience), or you may be nearing the peak age for a midlife crisis, in which case you might want to throw in a Porsche, too.

(Not a BMW, or else you could end up brawling in the streets of Kyalami.)

What’s that peak age? According to Dartmouth College Professor and economist David Blanchflower, it’s 47,2 years old.

Blanchflower studied data from 132 countries, measuring the relationship between wellbeing and age, reports Bloomberg:

He concluded that in every country there is a “happiness curve” which is U-shaped over lifetimes. It reaches its lowest in the developing nations at 47.2.

“The curve’s trajectory holds true in countries where the median wage is high and where it is not and where people tend to live longer and where they don’t,” Blanchflower wrote in a study which was distributed on Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

In order to be around the age of 47,2 today, you would be born around November 1972. If you know someone born around that date, pop them a message and tell them they’re special.

Back to Blanchflower’s findings, with more from the New York Post:

Blanchflower wrote that the parameters for “unhappiness” used in the study include feelings of “despair; anxiety; loneliness; sadness; strain, depression and bad nerves; phobias and panic; being downhearted; having restless sleep; losing confidence in oneself; not being able to overcome difficulties; being under strain; feeling a failure; feeling left out; feeling tense; and thinking of yourself as a worthless person.”

So yeah, a midlife crisis then.

The same study also found that middle-aged married people were “significantly [happier] than those of the unmarried”.

No word on whether that was the first or second marriage, though.

If you are feeling a sense of despair or loneliness, you can phone SADAG for help.

[sources:bloomberg&nypost]