Middle age misery peaks at 47.2 Middle age is miserable, according to a new economic study which pinpoints 47.2 years old as the moment of peak unhappiness in the developed world. Dartmouth College Professor David Blanchflower, a former Bank of England policy maker, studied data across 132 countries to measure the relationship between wellbeing and age. He concluded that in every country there is a "happiness curve" that is U-shaped over lifetimes.Read more on NewsOK.com