Young people now experience higher levels of despair than midlife and older adults, reversing the longstanding hump-shaped relationship between age and mental despair. The decline in mental health is particularly evident for ages 12-25 and is especially pronounced among young women. The rise in youth despair is directly linked to deteriorating labor-market conditions and limited economic opportunities for early-career workers. The quarter-life crisis has become a common feature of early adulthood, replacing the traditional midlife peak in despair. The trend aligns with rising burnout, career skepticism, and pragmatic approaches to work among younger cohorts.
From chronic struggles with burnout to a pragmatic, even skeptical take on how to lead their careers, the generation that entered the workforce during the age of quiet quitting has come to exemplify the quarter-life crisis. But what if this is the new norm, and the midlife crisis is going extinct the way other trappings of the 20th century have, like dial-up internet and Kodak film? What if Gen Z has giant, macroeconomically valid reasons for being plunged into a collective quarter-life crisis?
Young people are now experiencing much higher levels of "despair" than those in midlife and older age, reversing the longstanding generational pattern of a "hump-shaped" relationship between mental despair and age. To sum: Way back when, you were supposed to be full of despair in middle age, not in adolescence or early adulthood. Economists David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College and the University of Glasgow, and Alex Bryson of University College London, are unequivocal: This is nothing less than the "disappearance" of the traditional midlife crisis.
Instead, they found the quarter-life crisis is very real, and Gen Z is struggling by historical standards (although they do not use the term "quarter-life crisis"). The decline in mental health among young people, they write, is "particularly evident for young people ages 12-25, and especially young women." What's more-and what sets Blanchflower and Bryson's research apart from so much other relevant work in this area-is it's the first study to directly link youth despair to what's happening in the labor market.
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