- Feb 5, 2002
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Even accounting for the fact that a lot of men get divorced, ever having been married is still associated with higher happiness for men.
Comparing divorced/separated men to never-married men over 30, there is no significant difference in their happiness.
On the whole, getting married and trying hard to stay married seem like a winning bet for men.
Is marriage a losing bet for men? The (unmarried), self-described “anti-feminist” Internet commentator H. Pearl Davis has repeatedly argued to her millions of social media followers that marriage doesn’t make sense for men. Her main argument is based on one point: that divorce happens, and divorce has large negative consequences for men. Empirically, her argument is basically that, sure, being married may be good for men’s happiness, but staying married is no guarantee, so the real happiness effect of getting married is not correctly estimated when we look at currently-married men. Implicitly, Davis suggests that the happiness penalty from divorce is so large, and divorce so common, that it eliminates any happiness benefit from marriage.
On its face, this a reasonable argument—but it is also an empirically testable one. Using the General Social Survey (GSS), I test it and show that, in fact, divorce risks do not eliminate the happiness benefits of marriage. Even accounting for divorce risks, marriage has positive links to men’s happiness.
To begin with, I assess self-reported happiness in 50 years of cross-sectional data from the GSS. This survey asks about happiness on a simple 3-point scale, so doesn’t give us a lot of granularities, but provides a starting point with a large sample size. Figure 1 shows the difference in happiness between ever-married men (even if divorced, widowed, or separated) and never-married men, with and without a battery of control variables. It then shows the difference between divorced and never-married men, among men over 30 (under-30s are excluded because those divorces are quite rare, and most never-married men under 30 end up marrying by their 30s, so they aren’t a good control group).
Continued below.
ifstudies.org
Comparing divorced/separated men to never-married men over 30, there is no significant difference in their happiness.
On the whole, getting married and trying hard to stay married seem like a winning bet for men.
Is marriage a losing bet for men? The (unmarried), self-described “anti-feminist” Internet commentator H. Pearl Davis has repeatedly argued to her millions of social media followers that marriage doesn’t make sense for men. Her main argument is based on one point: that divorce happens, and divorce has large negative consequences for men. Empirically, her argument is basically that, sure, being married may be good for men’s happiness, but staying married is no guarantee, so the real happiness effect of getting married is not correctly estimated when we look at currently-married men. Implicitly, Davis suggests that the happiness penalty from divorce is so large, and divorce so common, that it eliminates any happiness benefit from marriage.
On its face, this a reasonable argument—but it is also an empirically testable one. Using the General Social Survey (GSS), I test it and show that, in fact, divorce risks do not eliminate the happiness benefits of marriage. Even accounting for divorce risks, marriage has positive links to men’s happiness.
To begin with, I assess self-reported happiness in 50 years of cross-sectional data from the GSS. This survey asks about happiness on a simple 3-point scale, so doesn’t give us a lot of granularities, but provides a starting point with a large sample size. Figure 1 shows the difference in happiness between ever-married men (even if divorced, widowed, or separated) and never-married men, with and without a battery of control variables. It then shows the difference between divorced and never-married men, among men over 30 (under-30s are excluded because those divorces are quite rare, and most never-married men under 30 end up marrying by their 30s, so they aren’t a good control group).
Continued below.
Exploring the Happiness Premium for Ever-Married Men
Is marriage a losing bet for men? The (unmarried), self-described “anti-feminist” Internet commentator H. Pearl Davis has repeatedly argued to her millions of social media followers that marriage doesn’t make sense for men. Her main argument is based on one point: that divorce happens, and...
ifstudies.org
