in spite of viral TikTok And despite widespread testimony to the contrary, hard data shows that marriage is a strong predictor of happiness. To take the most recent example, a new study by economist Sam Peltzman found that the “most important distinction” between who is “happy” and who is not is marriage, with married people They were 30% more likely to say they were happy. than those who are unmarried.
But “happiness” is just one relatively narrow way in which people think about their well-being. Although a person may not be “happy,” they can still feel stable, balanced, and content. Do the “benefits of marriage” extend to these subtle perceptions of subjective well-being?
The 2022 Cooperative Election Study (CES) helps answer this question. The CES asked respondents to rate the overall quality of their mental health (“In general, would you say your mental health is…excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor?”); We included a set of items that measured who the respondent was. and what they believe. We also sampled enough Americans (60,000 people) to draw meaningful generalizations about all major demographic groups in the country.
According to the CES data, married people appear to experience greater mental health benefits that pay off immediately and don't diminish over time. As the figure below shows, those who got married last year (55.9%) and those who got married more than a year ago (57.1%) reported their mental health to be “very good” or “very good.” There was no significant difference in the proportion of people who did. In contrast, only 38.4% of unmarried people described their mental health this way.
The most striking conclusion from CES so far is that marriage appears to provide mental health benefits indiscriminately. This means that members of nearly every major demographic group in American society are better off from a mental health perspective than their unmarried peers. Specifically, being married is defined as male and female, young and old, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, religious and non-religious, white and non-white, liberal and conservative, and parents and children. significantly correlated with improved mental health among those without.
Consider your gender. Recent studies have shown significant gender differences in mental health, with women reporting higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns. Consistent with these studies, 2022 CES data shows that women are less likely than men to say their mental health is “excellent” or “very good” (42.8% to 51.3 %).
However, being married was associated with better mental health for both men and women. In fact, the benefits of marriage are so great that married women were significantly more likely than unmarried men to describe their mental health as “very good” or “very good” (51.5% vs. 41.9%).
What about age? A growing number of worrying studies are being published regarding the poor quality and decline of mental health among young people. CES data supports the film's gloomy reputation. Over 70% of Silent Generation and 60% of Baby Boomers report their mental health is “very good” or “very good,” while only 29.4% of Gen Z do. Masu.
But as the chart above shows, being married is correlated with better mental health, regardless of when you were born. More importantly, the mental health benefits of marriage appear to be most important to the youngest Americans. The mental health disparity between married and unmarried people is 5.2% for the Silent Generation, 11.4% for Boomers, 15.0% for Gen X, 16.4% for Millennials, and 15.7% for Gen Z.
Generally speaking, money helps your mental health. At CES 2022, 36.8% of Americans with annual incomes of less than $40,000 reported “excellent” or “very good” mental health, while 60.7% of Americans with annual incomes of $150,000 or more reported “very good” mental health. “It's good for people.'' However, this is not all. Again, marriage is associated with better mental health at all levels of annual income.
Marriage has a similar effect on happiness regardless of educational attainment. Married people are about 16% more likely than unmarried people to describe their mental health as “very good” or “very good” across all categories of formal education.
Going to church is also an important factor. Political scientist Ryan Burge has convincingly shown that “as religious attendance increases, the likelihood of mental illness decreases.” The diagram above confirms this basic relationship, but adds something more. Regardless of how often they go to church, married people have significantly better mental health than unmarried people.
There are few institutions in American society that are equally effective across the country's vast racial disparities. But when it comes to mental health, marriage does pay off. As the figure above shows, the mental health gap between married and unmarried people is 19.8% for whites, 14.6% for African Americans, 21.3% for Hispanics, 16.3% for Asian Americans, and 16.3% for other people. In the species group, it is 20.9%.
Sociologist Moussa Al Gharbi says, “The happiness gap between liberals and conservatives is one of the most robust patterns in social science research.'' Ideological asymmetries in happiness were also seen in the CES, with 37.8% of liberals and 59.9% of conservatives saying their mental health was “very good” or “very good.” Despite these fundamental differences, the “benefits of marriage” clearly apply to people across the political spectrum. In fact, marital disparities in mental health exceeded 10% within each ideologically defined category. It's also important to note here that conservatives are significantly more likely to be married than liberals (59.3% vs. 35.1%). If liberals and conservatives married at the same rate, the overall mental health gap between liberals and conservatives would likely be roughly halved.
Finally, the same basic story holds true for parent-child relationships. Regardless of the number of children, marriage leads to significant improvements in mental health.
benefits of marriage
The “benefits of marriage” for mental health are invariant with respect to gender, age, education, income, church attendance, race, political ideology, and parental status. The magnitude of this within-group 'advantage' is typically large and, with some minor exceptions, remains statistically significant even in multivariate analyzes incorporating a full range of controls.1
Of course, this analysis cannot tell us whether marriage-based differences in mental health are caused by marriage itself or simply by self-selection. We also don't know which aspects of marriage are responsible for the mental health benefits of marriage. In his new book, get marriedFor example, Brad Wilcox says, “Marriage is the best defense against loneliness.” Unfortunately, we do not know whether the improved mental health experienced by married people is a result of this relationship.
But this shows that marriage and mental health are closely linked for all Americans, regardless of demographics. It also suggests that an America with more marriages is an America with higher overall happiness.
Kevin Wallsten is a professor in the Department of Political Science at California State University, Long Beach.
1. We ran an OLS regression model predicting mental health based on each of the individual-level attributes listed above (as well as employment status and urbanicity) and their interaction with marital status. The importance of the marginal effects associated with the interaction term in such models is much more important and obvious than the importance of the interaction term alone. Using this approach, all but her three relationships detailed above (between Asian Americans, between members of the “other” racial group, and between members of the Silent Generation) are reduced by the addition of statistical controls. It was significant later.
