- Sep 13, 2002
- 94,075
- 190,335
- 113
Interesting study results:
By Olga Khazan
AUGUST 31, 2023
In the year 2000, having narrowly escaped the Y2K computer glitch, Americans should have been poised to party. The bendy riff of the Santana–Rob Thomas joint “Smooth” wailed from Top 40 stations everywhere. Survivor beckoned us to watch people eat grubs for a chance at $1 million. Brad and Jen got married, and the gladiator Maximus Decimus Meridius asked acerbically, “Are you not entertained?”
But we weren’t. In fact, after chugging along steadily for decades, American happiness began to decline that year, modestly but definitively. A chart of American happiness ratings looks like this: a flat, basically happy line that starts in the 1970s, followed by a plunge into meh right around the new millennium.
The chart comes from a recent paper by Sam Peltzman, an emeritus economics professor at the University of Chicago. For the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, Peltzman looked at the General Social Survey, which since 1972 has asked thousands of Americans, “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days—would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” If you imagine this large sample as 100 people, historically about 50 of those people say they’re “pretty happy,” and that’s still true. But in the 1970s, about 35 people would say they’re “very happy,” and 15 would say “not too happy.” That began to shift around 2000, and now about 32 people say they’re “very happy” and 18 say they’re “not too happy.”
To quote a Destiny’s Child song of that vintage, why the sudden change?
After slicing the demographic data every which way—income, education level, race, location, age, and gender—Peltzman found that this happiness dip is mainly attributable to one thing: Married people are happier, and Americans aren’t getting married as much. In 1980, 6 percent of 40-year-olds had never been married, but today, it’s 25 percent. “The recent decline in the married share of adults can explain (statistically) most of the recent decline in overall happiness,” he writes.
Married people are much happier than the unmarried, according to these data. Looking at those same 100 people, 40 married people will say they’re happy, and 10 will say they’re not happy. But single people are about evenly split between happy and not happy. It doesn’t really matter if you are divorced, are widowed, or have never married: If you’re not married, you’re less likely to be happy. “The only happy people for 50 years have been married people,” Peltzman told me.
One paper alone might be easy enough to dismiss, but this is a fairly consistent finding dating back decades in social-science research: Married people are happier. Period.
To be honest, this puzzles me, because after 13 years of cohabitation, I’m currently trying to get married, and it’s not making me very happy at all. I say “trying” because this event, which should be entirely within my partner’s and my control, instead relies on a sprawling, expensive bureaucracy that doesn’t always reply to my emails.
Marriage, in theory, doesn’t have to cost much; a license usually runs less than $100. In practice, though, the costs can be considerable. The average wedding now costs $30,000, according to a survey from The Knot. Prenups are becoming more popular; a Harris poll recently reported that 15 percent of Americans have signed one. And that leaves aside the psychic toll of checking in with, following up on, and coordinating all the marriage-adjacent entities that inevitably get sucked into the process.
Getting married, especially at an advanced age, is difficult and expensive even if, like my boyfriend and me, you’re not planning an actual wedding. As of this writing, we’re waiting on my prenup lawyer to get back to me, so that I can wade through a bunch of paragraphs that start with “Notwithstanding the forgoing” and identify any changes I’d like to make, so that my boyfriend’s prenup lawyer can then reconcile those changes and we can get the thing notarized. This will cost us at least $1,200 each, on top of the $600 we already spent drafting the prenup. (I didn’t think I needed a prenup, either, until I had a physical therapist who alternately kneaded my spine and regaled me with the story of her traumatic divorce that almost bankrupted her.) I’m not sure which is more magical: this, or picking out a health-insurance plan.
Take a Wife … Please!
Why are married people happier than the rest of us?By Olga Khazan
AUGUST 31, 2023
In the year 2000, having narrowly escaped the Y2K computer glitch, Americans should have been poised to party. The bendy riff of the Santana–Rob Thomas joint “Smooth” wailed from Top 40 stations everywhere. Survivor beckoned us to watch people eat grubs for a chance at $1 million. Brad and Jen got married, and the gladiator Maximus Decimus Meridius asked acerbically, “Are you not entertained?”
But we weren’t. In fact, after chugging along steadily for decades, American happiness began to decline that year, modestly but definitively. A chart of American happiness ratings looks like this: a flat, basically happy line that starts in the 1970s, followed by a plunge into meh right around the new millennium.
The chart comes from a recent paper by Sam Peltzman, an emeritus economics professor at the University of Chicago. For the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, Peltzman looked at the General Social Survey, which since 1972 has asked thousands of Americans, “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days—would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” If you imagine this large sample as 100 people, historically about 50 of those people say they’re “pretty happy,” and that’s still true. But in the 1970s, about 35 people would say they’re “very happy,” and 15 would say “not too happy.” That began to shift around 2000, and now about 32 people say they’re “very happy” and 18 say they’re “not too happy.”
To quote a Destiny’s Child song of that vintage, why the sudden change?
After slicing the demographic data every which way—income, education level, race, location, age, and gender—Peltzman found that this happiness dip is mainly attributable to one thing: Married people are happier, and Americans aren’t getting married as much. In 1980, 6 percent of 40-year-olds had never been married, but today, it’s 25 percent. “The recent decline in the married share of adults can explain (statistically) most of the recent decline in overall happiness,” he writes.
Married people are much happier than the unmarried, according to these data. Looking at those same 100 people, 40 married people will say they’re happy, and 10 will say they’re not happy. But single people are about evenly split between happy and not happy. It doesn’t really matter if you are divorced, are widowed, or have never married: If you’re not married, you’re less likely to be happy. “The only happy people for 50 years have been married people,” Peltzman told me.
One paper alone might be easy enough to dismiss, but this is a fairly consistent finding dating back decades in social-science research: Married people are happier. Period.
To be honest, this puzzles me, because after 13 years of cohabitation, I’m currently trying to get married, and it’s not making me very happy at all. I say “trying” because this event, which should be entirely within my partner’s and my control, instead relies on a sprawling, expensive bureaucracy that doesn’t always reply to my emails.
Marriage, in theory, doesn’t have to cost much; a license usually runs less than $100. In practice, though, the costs can be considerable. The average wedding now costs $30,000, according to a survey from The Knot. Prenups are becoming more popular; a Harris poll recently reported that 15 percent of Americans have signed one. And that leaves aside the psychic toll of checking in with, following up on, and coordinating all the marriage-adjacent entities that inevitably get sucked into the process.
Getting married, especially at an advanced age, is difficult and expensive even if, like my boyfriend and me, you’re not planning an actual wedding. As of this writing, we’re waiting on my prenup lawyer to get back to me, so that I can wade through a bunch of paragraphs that start with “Notwithstanding the forgoing” and identify any changes I’d like to make, so that my boyfriend’s prenup lawyer can then reconcile those changes and we can get the thing notarized. This will cost us at least $1,200 each, on top of the $600 we already spent drafting the prenup. (I didn’t think I needed a prenup, either, until I had a physical therapist who alternately kneaded my spine and regaled me with the story of her traumatic divorce that almost bankrupted her.) I’m not sure which is more magical: this, or picking out a health-insurance plan.
