People 'get happier as they age'

When you're a teen you're either extremely idealistic and deeply troubled or extremely idealistic and happy, either way exciting times.<p>Your 20s are a weird transitional period between that and adulthood.<p>Your 30s, your adulthood, for the wast majority of us, you're finally coming to terms with the fact that you will NOT be just like James Bond, or Michal Jordan, or Michal Jackson, that you will in fact be perfectly ordinary.<p>This sucks hard, but you're an adult now and quite possibly may even already be responsible for your own family.<p>So most of us adjust.<p>And when you're old, you wake up realize you're not dead yet, and that right there puts you in a good mood.

What happened to grumpy old men?

It does not appear the Carstensen survey controlled for the many ways unhappy people deselect themselves from the old-age pool, by dying early. (It's unclear whether the Charles review considered this, either.)<p>There is plenty of evidence from other research that "happy people live longer". Because of this quite-literal "survivor bias", these reports provide essentially no evidence that "less-happy people become happier as they age".

Now, do IT people, especially programmers get happier as they age?