Well-being Increases As We Age

March 14, 2013 | by

Statistics is powerful stuff. When using cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses to assess well-being in over 5,000 adults over thirty years, researchers initially found that well-being decreases with age: older people are unhappier than younger people. But when the researchers controlled for birth cohort, they found that each individual’s well-being increased with age. Sure, the 70 year olds were less happy than the 50 year olds; but those 70 year olds were happier than they were when they were 50. The study is published in the journal Psychological Science.

Happy older people

Health Highlights – June 6th, 2011

June 6, 2011 | by

Health Highlights is an occasionally recurring series focused on particularly interesting articles from credible sources of health and medical information that we follow & read. For a complete list of recommeded sources, see our links page.

Health Highlights

Health in 200 Countries Over 200 Years in 4 Minutes

December 5, 2010 | by

Hans Rosling is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute, one of Europe’s largest medical universities, and Director of the Gapminder Foundation, a non-profit venture that promotes sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by the increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels.

Rosling’s lectures combine huge quantities of public data with a sport commentator’s style to reveal the story of the world’s past, present and future development. Here, he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers — in just four minutes.

Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Rosling shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.

References

  1. The Joy of Stats. BBC. Accessed 2010 Dec 4.

Health Highlights – January 6th, 2009

January 6, 2009 | by

Health Highlights is a biweekly summary of particularly interesting articles from credible sources of health and medical information that we follow & read. For a complete list of recommeded sources, see our links page.

Health Highlights