A new study found that life may be more stressful now than it was in the 1990s, especially for people between the ages of 45 and 64.

A team of researchers led by Penn State found that across all ages, there was a slight increase in daily stress in the 2010s compared to the 1990s. But when researchers restricted the sample to people between the ages of 45 and 64, there was a sharp increase in daily stress.

«On average, people reported about 2 percent more stressors in the 2010s compared to people in the past,» said David M. Almeida, professor of human development and family studies at Penn State. «That’s around an additional week of stress a year. But what really surprised us is that people at mid-life reported a lot more stressors, about 19 percent more stress in 2010 than in 1990. And that translates to 64 more days of stress a year.»

Almeida said the findings were part of a larger project aiming to discover whether health during the middle of Americans’ lives has been changing over time.

«Certainly, when you talk to people, they seem to think that daily life is more hectic and less certain these days,» Almeida said. «And so we wanted to actually collect that data and run the analyses to test some of those ideas.»

For the study, the researchers used data collected from 1,499 adults in 1995 and 782 different adults in 2012. Almeida said the goal was to study two cohorts of people who were the same age at the time the data was collected but born in different decades. All study participants were interviewed daily for eight consecutive days.

Story Source:
Materials provided by Penn State. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.