In news that will surprise nobody, it has been reported that married people can boast about being happier than their single counterparts.
The findings were outlined in a paper by the Journal of Happiness Studies, which was compiled by Shawn Grover and John Helliwell of the Vancouver School of Economics in Canada. It drew on two surveys, the first from the British Household Panel, which spoke to 30,000 people between 1991 and 2009, and the Annual Population Survey of 2011-2013, which asked 328,000 Brits how happy they were with their lives across different ages, as well as if they were married, unmarried or never-married.
“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,” the study states.
Companionship was the main factor in the happiness of married couples, with the study finding that: ‘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.’
So, not only can married people split the bills and have someone to go on holiday with, they can also count being more cheerful amongst their blessings too.
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