Are Married People Happier Than Unmarried People?
Before you tie or untie the knot, you’ll need to untangle this question: Are married couples better off than single people?
To discover the answer, several areas of daily living need to be examined.
Finances
Forbes magazine claims marriage places a tight squeeze on your finances. In the first year of marriage, newlyweds are scouting for a bigger home, purchasing nicer cars or taking on more expenses like insurance and home improvement.
What are financial advantages to married life? In a nutshell, a marriage involves two people contributing money. Not just one.
With more available cash, a lesser percentage (9.3%) of the couple’s monthly income is slated for rent. The single person earmarks at least 25% of his monthly nut for rent!
Married people pay less for food, cable television and the telephone bill. Why? There are more finances to work with. A couple who files their 1040 jointly gets relief on both federal and Social Security taxes. However, once the couple has children, their monthly expenses skyrocket.
On the flip side, single people save more money since they’re not shelling out a big chunk of their income on living expenses.
In the end, married people fare better because two heads and two incomes are better than one.
Social Life
From two national studies done at Penn State University, married people today spend 40% less time with one another than they did twenty years ago.
Husbands and wives are developing their own networks of friends, joining different community organizations, pursuing separate hobbies and taking separate vacations.
Regarding marital happiness, socialite couples run neck and neck with active single people.
Physical Health
If you’re the kind of person who makes excessive demands, is too critical or continually agitates your partner, you may be making your mate sick.
In contrast, experts from the American Psychological Association state that possessing good communication skills, exhibiting dependability and understanding your mate can boost your partner’s health.
On that same note, UCLA and UC Davis researchers report women in happy marriages recover more quickly from workday stress than women in unhappy relationships. This is due to the presence of the stress hormone cortisol according to The Sacramento Bee. When cortisol levels are high, women in happy marriages rebound quicker from a busy, stressful workday.
Who wins on this indicator? Since singles lack someone living with them wearing on their health or helping them with their stress levels, I call it a tie.
Emotional Wellbeing
Studies from the American Psychological Association's (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, demonstrate most people are no more satisfied with life after marriage than they were prior to marriage.
A chronically unhappy person is not going to change their unhappiness after marriage. Watch out for the mate who demands, it’s your responsibility to keep them happy.
Marriage or divorce does not have the same implications for all individuals. A person satisfied with life probably has a rich social network and has less to gain from the companionship of marriage. On the other hand, the person who is lonely and, therefore, somewhat dissatisfied, can gain much by marrying.
No winner on this contest. A single person can be happy without a mate and a married person can be unhappy even with a life partner.
Researchers will admit the increase in happiness of married people is very small -- approximately one tenth of one point on an 11-point scale.
The best advice is that happiness-for single or married people-is a decision you make on how you want to approach what life has handed to you.
John
Email John: johnsblog@teshmedia.com
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How can you compare the single life (even one where you have friends and the occasional sex) with a happy marriage, even a mediocre one? Your data is selective. I have seen numerous studies indicating that married people are generally overall more happy, healthy and successful than single people. The people who advocate the single life are just talking sour grapes....And this is coming from a single person.
Posted by:jon | May 27, 2008 at 05:01 PM