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Happily Aged

Happiness in India is described as an anomaly in this article that analyses results from a survey: 

India is an anomaly. Here, life satisfaction was found to be higher among the older people. At 140 million, India’s older population is the second largest in the world and growing steadily, with the average growth rate “three times higher than the overall population growth rate”. The researchers relied on the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI, 2017-19) dataset and analysed the following metrics: satisfaction with living arrangements, perceived discrimination and self-rated health. Education, wealth, access to healthcare, support systems and social acceptance were also analysed. To their surprise, and a departure from scholarly research, older age in India was associated with higher life satisfaction. The opposite was believed to be true to so far. Age and life satisfaction go hand-in-hand only in high-income countries; the experiences of India’s old people were also defined by childhood, financial status, lack of social support, physical frailty, and feelings of loneliness.

As some who started went to college in India and started their career there, I think it makes sense that the elderly feel happier than the youth. My friend S who lives and works in Kolkata framed the problem as the muscle of Bengal being outside of West Bengal and India. So what remains in Kolkata is retirees who have no goals to pursue, no need to go out and earn a living - a body sans muscle. While that is not the state of every state and big city in India, the problems of Bengal and Kolkata are not that unique. The elderly are surrounded by people - friends, neighbors and family so they don't feel lonely. Since they no longer have to perform daily heroics to earn a salary, get kids through school and college, the level of stress is confined to buying food, paying bills and taking care of health issues. There are no unpleasant surprises and obstacle courses waiting for them each day as they go out to be gainfully employed and provide for those that depend on them.

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