This paper documents a longitudinal crisis of midlife among the inhabitants of rich nations. Yet middle-aged citizens in our data sets are close to their peak earnings, have typically experienced little or no illness, reside in some of the safest countries in the world, and live in the most...

Recent research has argued that psychological well-being is U-shaped through the life cycle. The difficulty with such a claim is that there are likely to be omitted cohort effects (earlier generations may have been born in, say, particularly good or bad times). Hence the apparent U may be an...

Rationale: Physical pain is one of the most severe of human experiences. It is thus one of the most important to understand. Objective: This paper reports the first cross-country study of the links between physical pain and the state of the economy. A key issue examined is how the level of pain...