It is an age often marked by baldness, breakups and babies becoming grownups.

Yet experts believe that the dread and misery associated with middle age could all be down to genetics.

An academic study led by a former Bank of England economist has pinpointed the precise age of peak unhappiness in the developed world as 47.2 years old.

Professor David Blanchflower CBE, a former Bank of England policy maker who now holds a position as Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, studied data across 132 countries to measure the relationship between wellbeing and age.

He concluded that in every country there is a “happiness curve” which is U-shaped over lifetimes. It reaches its lowest in the developing nations at 48.2.