This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, February 4th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Life gets better after 50, and that may be cold comfort for someone in her 30s or 40s, but author Jonathan Rauch says

that it's true. In his book The Happiness Curve, he argues that the slump people tend

to experience in their 40s isn't a crisis, but an essential stage of life.

We spoke last month.

A friend of mine who is a little older than me, we were talking once and she was talking

about her various systems beginning to break down or health-wise not doing wonderfully.

And she asked me what health problems I had and I am 41 years old and I said well

none really to speak of and she called sort of narrowed her eyes and said,

something's gonna break on you soon.

And, um...

I think she said that in a hopeful way.

I don't, yeah, it seemed that way.

So the question is, you know, with, you know, health,

declining people are rapidly approaching retirement with more or less certainty about their

prospects in retirement and witnessing the world that we live in and how chaotic it seems,

why do you argue that life gets better at 50?

Most of what you just said, Caleb, is either wrong, obsolete, or becoming obsolete.

It's now pretty clear, tons and tons of evidence, that on average the emotional peak of life is not

until the 60s, the 70s, even beyond.

Other things being equal, now this is assuming you don't have cancer, but other things being equal, there's a

...