Happiness, Money & Marriage
Once again economists have proved common sense to be true, but sometimes we all need to hear common sense. After all, it is called “common” sense because as it is held in common it is reasonable–individuals have all kinds of firmly held, quirky and just plain wrong ideas.
Increasingly, economists and social scientists do offer an important sort of truth–they simply report facts that are of great use to the other sciences. When one needs to know what is commonly held and what is commonly experienced, they can be of great help. (One must be extremely careful in accepting their interpretation of the data and the way in which they collect it, but so must one be careful in accepting the vast majority of opinions and arguments.) Thus, in an odd way, many of these modern sciences, which have a wretched track record, are churning out the sorts of things that Aristotle would pay attention to before writing a treatise. After all, one ought never to take for granted or scoff at the obvious, for to do so would be to scoff at the beginning and end of philosophy itself.
Anyhow, on we go to the human interest economic stories of the day:
First:
“The relationship between money and happiness is pretty darned small.”
So what does contribute to happiness?
Researchers. . .have used. . .data to assess what other factors–such as marriage, sex or health–make people happy, either in absolute terms or compared with money. The data allow some fairly certain conclusions. . . Happiness has remained fairly constant over time, despite rising incomes; women are happier than men, though the gap is getting smaller; happiness is U-shaped, meaning people are happiest when they are very young and very old and least happy around age 40; unemployment reduces happiness, even beyond what might be explained by the reduction in income; and marriage adds to happiness, as does regular sex.
Marriage is a big factor:
When it comes to creating happiness, being married is worth $100,000 per year…
Whatever the precise dollar value, economists say that marriage is good for you. Married people are healthier, both physically and psychologically; they live longer; they benefit from a kind of all-purpose insurance policy against adverse life events. Married people earn more money, even accounting for the prospect that those who may earn more may be more likely to get married in the first place. No surprise: They are also happier, economists say, citing survey data not just in the U.S. but in the European Union, Russia and Latin America. It’s true for both men and women.
Whatever its cause, the effect is so pronounced that the reduction in the percentage of married people (due to divorce and later marriages) may be a primary cause of what Blanchflower and Oswald say is an overall decline in the level of well-being in the U.S. over the last quarter-century. While both married people and non-marrieds (whether never married, divorced or widowed) have grown slightly happier, the fact that a smaller share are married has made the overall level of U.S. subjective well-being lower than it was in the 1970s.
Of course, one reason for the lower marriage rates is the rise in divorce rates. Divorce, by all accounts, is bad for well-being. . .”With divorce, it depends on how you look at it,” says George Loewenstein, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in the economics of tradeoffs. “People who get divorced actually get happier when they get divorced.” They are, however, decidedly less happy than those who get married and stay that way.
That much your mother could have told you.
Fair enough.
