Marriage could help navigate a midlife crisis and is likely to give you more life satisfaction than staying single, a new economic research paper has found.
A working paper published by the National Bureau of Research also found that those who call their marital partner their best friend are even more likely to be happy.
Two economists, John Helliwell at the University of British Columbia and Shawn Grover at the Canadian department of finance, analysed three large datasets – the United Kingdom’s annual population survey (APS), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the Gallup World Poll – to measure life satisfaction both before and during marriage.
The analysis allowed the researchers to draw conclusions about life satisfaction in regions including North America, western Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, south-east Asia and Australasia, and suggested that not only are those who marry happier than single people, but that the positive effects of marriage extend into the long term.
“Marriage seems to be most important in middle age when people of every marital status experience a dip in wellbeing. This result seems to be applicable globally, even in regions of the world where the average effects of marriage are not positive,” the researchers concluded.
Helliwell and Grover’s analysis also showed variations around the world. For example, marriage was likely to cause more happiness in all of Europe, but was “negatively associated with life evaluations” in Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa.
The conclusions are at odds with recent trends in the US, which show that a record number of Americans have never been married.
Statistics analysed by the Pew Research Center in September 2014 showed that one in five people in the US over the age of 25 (around 42 million people) had never married, jumping from 9% in 1960.
