TruthBook Religious News Blog

Married people are happier than unmarried people
... so this country's got a problem

from the Morning Sentinel

The New York Times reported this week that, according to the U.S. Census, married women living with their spouse are now a minority of all women.

In 2005, the most recent year for which data is available, 49 percent of women 16 and over are married and living with their spouse; 3 percent are married but separated; 2 percent are married, but the spouse is absent (for example, in the military stationed abroad), 9 percent are widowed, 11 percent divorced, and the remaining 25 percent have never married. Although the Times article focused on single women, the figures for men are, not surprisingly, roughly similar: 53 percent are married and living with their spouse; only 2 percent, however, are widowed; 9 percent are divorced, and 31 percent never married, the remainder being separated or absent from their marriage partners.

In 1965, by contrast, almost two- thirds (65 percent) of women were married and living with their spouse. That figure has steadily declined since then, however: In 1970, the comparable figure was 60 percent; then it was 56 percent in 1980 and 53 percent in 1990. Although the Times did not report the comparable figures for men, they must be roughly similar and reflect the same downward trend.

Although we probably all know some woman or some man who is happy to be single -- who, like the women quoted in the Times, delights in not having to share the remote control or to pick up someone else's dirty socks -- there is reason to believe that such people are the exception, not the rule.

The Pew Research Center released a study last February about the demographic and lifestyle factors that correlate with happiness and unhappiness. Entitled "Are We Happy Yet?," the study relied on a survey of approximately 3000 American adults who were asked to rate how happy they felt and to provide some descriptive information about themselves (such as their race, sex, marital status, income and so on).

The results of the happiness survey provide good reason to be concerned about the trends reported by the Census Bureau. Among the most significant findings was the discovery that married people are substantially happier than the unmarried. 43 percent of married people -- the figure is the same for men and women -- report themselves as being "very happy," while only 24 percent of unmarried men and women say the same. Moreover, single parents of minor children report being significantly more unhappy than their married counterparts: 27 percent of the single parents say they are "very unhappy," while only eight percent of the married parents report an equal level of unhappiness.

But if marriage is so good for us, why is it on the decline, as the Census data suggest?

Such large-scale societal trends as these are typically the product of large-scale social forces, which create short-term incentives for doing what is not in our long-term best interest. Rather than celebrate the increasing number of single-person households, policymakers should recognize instead the fragility of marriage as a social institution and seek ways to encourage women and men to embrace it once more.

Joseph R. Reisert is an associate professor of American Constitutional Law and chairman of the Department of Government at Colby College in Waterville.