Something is going wrong for middle-aged Americans, and most of the wealthy world doesn’t share the problem. A new review of research spanning multiple countries and generations has found that Americans ages 50 to 65 are experiencing rising loneliness, worsening depression, declining memory, and worsening grip strength, with mixed evidence on other physical-health measures, compared with Americans who were the same age decades ago. This pattern is largely unique to the United States, though Mediterranean Europe has shown a similar drift on some measures.
While middle-aged adults in Northern Europe are actually getting healthier andless lonelyover time, and those in England and Mexico are showing improvements on several measures, their American counterparts are sliding backward. Later-born Americans (those from the baby boom through early Generation X) are doing measurably worse on health indicators than people who were their age decades ago. And it’s not a minor trend. Across loneliness, depressive symptoms, memory performance, and grip strength, a widely used marker of overall physical condition, the trend lines for the United States all point in the wrong direction.
The review,publishedinCurrent Directions in Psychological Science, pulls together a series of studies conducted by researchers at Arizona State University, Humboldt University of Berlin, University Medicine Greifswald, and Brandeis University. Led by Frank J. Infurna, the team documented what’s happening, built a framework to explain why it might be happening, and proposed what could be done about it.
To reach their conclusions, the research team used data from large, nationally representative surveys that have been combined and standardized through an initiative called the Gateway to Global Aging. These surveys, conducted across the United States, England, Continental Europe, Northern Europe, Mediterranean Europe, South Korea, China, andMexico, track participants over time, typically checking in every two years. Continuously adding new participants strengthens the ability to detect real changes across generations.
Researchers applied statistical models to this data to separate differences within and between nations over several decades. Their results, displayed for a typical 50-year-old participant by birth year, show a consistent American disadvantage.
On loneliness, American middle-aged adults reported higher levels than their peers in every European region studied. Whilelonelinessfollowed a curved pattern over time in the United States rather than a straight upward line, overall levels remained elevated compared with other nations.
On memory, later-born groups of American middle-aged adults performed worse than earlier-born groups. That runs counter to the general trend in other countries, where memory scores have actually improved. The reversal is particularly surprising given that educational attainment has risen in the United States, which would normally be expected to boost mental performance.
Depressive symptoms told a similar story. Later-born American middle-aged adults reported more symptoms of depression than earlier-born groups. On grip strength, later-born Americans showed declines. Some studies also point to a rising rate of chronic illnesses among middle-aged Americans, though the evidence on physical health beyondgrip strengthis described as mixed.
Rather than a single cause, the research team’s review outlines a conceptual framework of forces that may be driving these trends, one the authors acknowledge has not yet been fully tested for causation. Their proposed explanation starts with national policies,cultural norms, and structural conditions that shape the environment in which people live.
Since the early 2000s, public spending on family benefits has risen across Europe while remaining stagnant in the United States.Income inequalityhas grown in the United States during this same period, while stabilizing or narrowing in most European nations. The United States lacks the kind of extensive family-support programs common in countries like Germany and Sweden: things like cash transfers to families with children, income support during parental leave, and subsidized childcare. The team’s own research found that in nations investing more in family benefits, middle-aged adults reported lower levels of loneliness and less steep increases over time, with this protective effect being stronger for later-born groups.
Source: Drudge Report
