Working Paper: NBER ID: w20794
Authors: Shawn Grover; John F. Helliwell
Abstract: Subjective well-being research has often found that marriage is positively correlated with well-being. Some have argued that this correlation may be result of happier people being more likely to marry. Others have presented evidence suggesting that the well-being benefits of marriage are short-lasting. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, we control individual pre-marital well-being levels and find that the married are still more satisfied, suggesting a causal effect, even after full allowance is made for selection effects. Using new data from the United Kingdom's Annual Population Survey, we find that the married have a less deep U-shape in life satisfaction across age groups than do the unmarried, indicating that marriage may help ease the causes of the mid-life dip in life satisfaction and that the benefits of marriage are unlikely to be short-lived. We explore friendship as a mechanism which could help explain a causal relationship between marriage and life satisfaction, and find that well-being effects of marriage are about twice as large for those whose spouse is also their best friend. Finally, we use the Gallup World Poll to show that although the overall well-being effects of marriage appear to vary across cultural contexts, marriage eases the middle-age dip in life evaluations for all regions except Sub-Saharan Africa.
Keywords: Marriage; Wellbeing; Life Satisfaction; Friendship
JEL Codes: I31; J12; J16
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Premarital Wellbeing Levels (I31) | Life Satisfaction (I31) |
| Cultural Variability in Marriage Effects (J12) | Life Satisfaction (I31) |
| Marriage (J12) | Life Satisfaction (I31) |
| Friendship (Y92) | Life Satisfaction (I31) |
| Marriage and Friendship Interaction (J12) | Life Satisfaction (I31) |
| Marriage (J12) | Life Satisfaction over Time (D15) |