ZIP Code DestinyAdult life13 of 19

Scene 13 of 19, People rate their lives lowest in midlife, while stress declines with age. Step 1 of 2, Life evaluation.

Gallup interviews, unweighted, by age at interview

People rate their lives lowest in midlife, while stress declines with age

Mean life evaluation falls from 7.03 among adults 18 to 24 to 6.84 among adults 45 to 54 and is 7.38 among adults 75 to 94

Scenes

Where the comparison starts

  1. Life expectancy falls with each step toward more deprived neighborhoods
  2. Inside each New York borough, neighborhoods differ widely in life expectancy
  3. Home values set most of the deprivation ranking

Growing up

  1. Babies in more deprived counties are more often born small or early
  2. Test scores rise with county income, and gaps between groups remain inside districts
  3. Black and white children raised in the same neighborhood reach different adult incomes
  4. Former students of for-profit colleges earn the least a decade after entry

Adult life

  1. Where local jobs are scarce, residents hold better-paid jobs than the county offers
  2. Whether rent burden rises with deprivation depends on the comparison
  3. More deprived places have less traffic pollution nationally, but more within their own county
  4. Young adults report more distress than a decade ago, and the top income bracket the least at every age
  5. Smoking falls as income rises, while binge drinking climbs
  6. People rate their lives lowest in midlife, while stress declines with age

Reading the patterns

  1. The most deprived places usually stand farther from the national value than the least deprived
  2. Neighborhoods a few kilometers apart can differ by years of life expectancy
  3. Most differences in life expectancy lie inside counties, not between them
  4. Neighborhood types line up on outcomes but blur into one another
  5. Mobility beyond what census measures predict clusters by region
  6. These comparisons describe places, not what moving would do

Read the bookExplore the figuresMethods

People rate their lives lowest in midlife, while stress declines with age

Scene 13 of 19, step 1 of 2: Life evaluation. Gallup interviews, unweighted, by age at interview.

What to say

The estimates are unweighted and compare people interviewed at different ages; the older respondents were born earlier and are the survivors of their cohorts. Nothing here follows a person through life.

About the chart

Mean life evaluation falls from 7.03 among adults 18 to 24 to 6.84 among adults 45 to 54 and is 7.38 among adults 75 to 94

The line drops from age 18 to age 25, changes little from ages 25 to 34 to ages 35 to 44, reaches its lowest five-year average near age 54, then rises to its highest values among the oldest adults. Each point is the unweighted mean ladder score for one year of age with a 95% interval clustered by county; the vertical rule marks the lowest point of the five-year moving average.

  • Each age is a different group of people interviewed in the same years, so a profile mixes age with birth cohort and does not follow anyone through life.
  • Cells at the oldest ages hold fewer interviews, so their intervals are wider; the extract has no interviews above age 94.
  • The ladder of 2008 is not used. Political questions that came before the ladder lowered it in 2008 and in the first months of 2009, and the extract has no interview month, so early 2009 interviews may carry part of the effect. Scores averaged 6.69 in 2008 and 7.03 in 2009, and the 2009 minus 2008 difference is between 0.29 and 0.38 ladder points in every age band.
  • The ladder was asked of 85% of interviews in 2009, of nearly all in 2010 to 2012 and of 49% from 2013 to 2017.
  • Gallup's extract has no survey weights, so every estimate is unweighted and levels can differ from the weighted figures Gallup publishes. County comes from the respondent's ZIP code and is approximate near county lines.

Source

Gallup U.S. Daily, ladder 2009-2017; unweighted, intervals clustered by county

Open in Chapter 6.4, Well-being across the life spanThe chapter’s report, with every estimate and table

Keys

Right, Space, Page Down
Next step, then the next scene
Left, Page Up
Previous step, then the previous scene
Home
First scene
O
Overview of the scenes
Click or tap
Next step; on the left fifth of the screen, the previous one
N
Notes: what to say, the chart’s caption and source, and the chapter
F
Fullscreen
Escape
Close a panel