How People Stay Hopeful and Happy After Age 80

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At first, I was thrilled to be 80. I've made it! I look and feel as good as I did at 50! Okay, maybe at 70.

But then I began to hear the tolling of distant bells—death, disability, losses, memory issues. Among other things, various friends needed knee surgery, hip surgery, or cancer treatment, and we all had aches and pains. There were deaths in the family. There were falls. And me? I began to wonder if my memory issues were normal or the harbinger of dementia. As my 85-year-old boyfriend says, “At 80, the bus stops at every corner, and somebody gets off.”

During the pandemic, I wrote a book, Silver Sparks, on the extensive survey research that shows that most people get happier as they get older. When I first read about this surprising research, I was fascinated, because I, too, had experienced an unexpected boost in happiness as I had aged. In fact, the 60s and 70s had been the best times of my life. It was a revelation to me that my experience was typical of aging.

But now I wondered: Would this joy persist into my 80s? I was beginning to feel like a hypocrite, touting the joys of aging on the one hand but now secretly dreading the future. Or was I just psyching myself out? After all, how much difference could there be between 79 and 80? Was I just a victim of my own internalized ageism?

I decided to re-check the happiness research. Did people 80 and older feel a drop in "subjective well-being?" If their happiness persisted, how did they do it? And what are the tricks of maintaining joy in life in the midst of so many challenges and losses?

The Happiness Research, Revisited

Jonathan Rauch, author of The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50, mapped happiness over time, and showed that it takes the shape of a "U-curve." In general, happiness levels are high in our 20s, then drop gradually, reaching their lowest point in midlife, before beginning a slow, steady rise in the 50-55 age group. Appropriately enough, the U-curve takes the shape of a smile.

But what about happiness at age 80? I re-checked the studies in Rauch's book. In one, Britain's Office for National Statistics surveyed over 300,000 people in 2014, asking, "Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?" As with similar studies, happiness dipped in midlife and began to rise again in the 50-54 age group, peaking at age 70. The "line of happiness," as I'll call it, then began to slowly fall—"mildly decline," in the author's words—until advanced old age (80 and beyond). Unfortunately, the data ended at "80 and over" for that study.

But here's another: The results of the 2010-2012 Gallop World Poll of 160 countries (represnting about 99% of the world's population) offers more optimism. The data showed a consistent rise in happiness up to age 85, where the data ends. Now that's more like it! In addition, according to the 2024 World Happiness report, people in the U.S. who are 60 and over continue to maintain their happy ways, ranking 10th among the world's countries. (On an ominous note, happiness among Americans 30 and younger has plummeted to 62nd among 143 countries, but that's another story.)

So the "line of happiness" continues to rise, if in some studies more slowly than others, even for those of us who have passed through the portal of "advanced old age." In the midst of so many losses, challenges, and transitions, how can this be?

Happiness Despite Everything

In a completely unscientific survey, I asked eight good friends, two of whom had recently been diagnosed with chronic illnesses, how they coped with the inevitable challenges of older life. Their answers, briefly, were:

• Acceptance. "I recite the Serenity Prayer all day long," said one.
• Savoring the present moment.
• Enjoying nature, whether outside or inside, including houseplants and the birds at the feeder.
• Gratitude.
• Support from family and friends, including the pleasure of their company.
• Creativity.
• Helping others.
• Doing what I've always wanted to do but never had time for.
• Learning new things.

These answers, while random, are consistent with the insights of aging researchers. The research of Laura Carstensen, Stanford researcher and author of A Long Bright Future, suggests that as we approach the end of life, we begin to focus on what we value most. In addition, aging brings what Carstensen calls the positivity effect—the tendency to notice positive information and news more than negative information and news. To quote Carstensen, old age “has its share of hardships and disappointments. It’s just that by the time people get there, they’re more attuned to the sweetness of life than to its bitterness.” Moreover, our ability to savor the present moment "helps us access a range of positive emotions, such as gratitude, appreciation, and resilience," as Maddy Dychtwald writes in her book, Ageless Aging.

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I use all the techniques listed above, with gratitude as my “go-to” coping mechanism. When the day gets difficult and my mind devolves into a caldron of negative emotions, I remind myself of all the good things in my life, including the basics: I’m alive, I’m relatively healthy, I have food on the table and a roof over my head, and I'm surrounded by family and friends. It’s good to know there’s hope and happiness to look forward to after age 80, and that the aging process itself can nourish both.

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