Spouse Happiness Contagious
Reported March 25, 2005
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Could your spouse’s happiness determine your own happiness?
Yes, finds a researcher from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom who studied couples taking part in a large national survey of life satisfaction. But the same is not true for people who are living together outside of marriage.
Nick Powdthavee, who presented his findings at the Annual Conference of the Royal Economic Society on March 22, studied data on more than 9,700 married couples and about 3,300 who were cohabitating. He looked at information gathered on what makes people satisfied with their circumstances in life. Overall, husbands and wives reported being happier if their spouse was also happy.
In fact, a spouse’s happiness even offset negative occurrences in the other spouse’s life. Results showed a 30-percent increase in happiness in one spouse in the past year totally negated the impact of the other spouse’s loss of a job. Having a happy spouse was more significant in creating happiness than owning one’s own home outright. A happy spouse also created as much happiness in the other spouse as not having to spend two months in the hospital over the previous year.
Similar results were lacking for the unmarried couples in the study, which came as a surprise to the investigator, as most people assume cohabitating couples experience much the same life satisfaction as married couples.
SOURCE: Royal Economic Society's Annual Conference in Nottingham, United Kingdom, March 21-23, 2005
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