If you’re somewhere in your 40s or 50s and feel like life has become unusually difficult, there may be more going on than the proverbial midlife crisis.
Research suggests that today’s middle-aged Americans may actually be faring worse than previous generations, and worse than many middle-aged adults living in Europe.
We’re talking about more than dissatisfaction with work or suddenly wondering whether you should buy a motorcycle.
Researchers are seeing concerning patterns involving physical health, mental health, loneliness, memory, and overall well-being.
So, what is going on with American midlife?
Midlife Well-Being in America Is Changing
In a recent paper examining historical changes in midlife well-being in the United States and Europe, psychologist Dr. Frank Infurna and his colleagues found something striking: declines in well-being during midlife appear to be particularly pronounced in the United States.
Dr. Infurna is a Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, and I invited him onto Causes or Cures to help me understand why.
Because if middle age itself were the problem, we’d expect to see similar patterns everywhere.
We don’t.
That raises a much more interesting public health question:
What is it about being middle-aged in America right now?
Is Midlife Getting Harder, or Are We Just Talking About It More?
There are plenty of possible explanations.
Middle-aged Americans are navigating high healthcare costs, financial pressures, changing workplaces, caregiving responsibilities, loneliness, and, in some cases, geographic separation from their families.
But teasing apart what’s actually driving declining well-being isn’t easy.
One possibility we discuss is whether people today are simply more comfortable reporting depression, loneliness, and other struggles than previous generations were.
That’s important. A change in what people report doesn’t necessarily mean the underlying experience has changed by the same amount.
But that doesn’t appear to explain everything researchers are seeing.
What’s Happening to Our Memory?
One of the findings I found particularly interesting involves cognitive health.
Are people in their 40s and 50s actually experiencing cognitive decline earlier?
Or are our brains simply overloaded?
Think about how many things compete for your attention on an average day: work, finances, family, email, phones, social media, healthcare, caregiving, approximately 700 passwords you’re somehow supposed to remember…
Feeling cognitively overwhelmed isn’t necessarily the same thing as experiencing neurological decline.
Dr. Infurna explains what researchers can—and can’t—conclude from the data and why the distinction matters.
Money, Healthcare and the Midlife Squeeze
We also get into something that’s difficult to separate from health in America: money.
Financial stress can affect well-being directly, but our healthcare system adds another wrinkle.
Health insurance is often tied to employment, potentially creating “job lock,” where people remain in jobs because leaving could jeopardize their health coverage.
And despite the United States spending enormous amounts on healthcare, Americans aren’t necessarily seeing better midlife outcomes.
So we get into the obvious question:
What are other countries doing differently?
Maybe the Midlife Crisis Isn’t Just About Midlife
That’s what I found most interesting about this research.
We tend to treat midlife struggles as an individual problem.
You’re burned out.
You’re lonely.
You’re stressed about money.
You’re forgetting things.
You need to exercise more, sleep better, meditate, reconnect with friends, and perhaps stop Googling “Is 49 too old to completely change careers?”
Some of that may help.
But when declining well-being appears across a population—and differs substantially between countries—it becomes harder to explain everything as a collection of individual choices.
It starts looking like a public health question.
And that’s the conversation I wanted to have.
In this episode of Causes or Cures, Dr. Frank Infurna and I explore what’s happening to middle-aged Americans, what researchers think may be driving these trends, what we still don’t know, and what evidence suggests might actually help.
If you’re currently navigating midlife—or wondering what’s waiting for you when you get there—listen to the full conversation with Dr. Frank Infurna here.
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