Couples married to happiness

Want a happier spouse? Start by boosting your own happiness. So reports Miranda Hitti on WebMD Health News. The old saying about marriage that "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" is getting some scientific support. Cultivating your own happiness could make your spouse happier, too.

"A married man is significantly more satisfied with his life when his wife becomes more satisfied with hers, and vice versa," says British researcher Nick Powdthavee of the economics department at Britain's University of Warwick. In fact, the positive impact of having a happy spouse can offset major problems such as unemployment or hospitalization.

A married man is significantly more satisfied with his life when his wife becomes more satisfied with hers, and vice versa. Unmarried couples living together don't show the same pattern.

Powdthavee took information from the 1996-2000 British Household Panel Survey that included 9,700 married people and a further 3,300 unmarried people living with their partner. All were 16-65 years old. The survey's topics included life satisfaction, education, income, and health. Based on those answers, Powdthavee used a complicated mathematical formula and principles from psychology to parse the nitty-gritty details of happiness.

He found that in married couples, happiness can overflow from one spouse to their partner. When a husband or wife notches up their own happiness level, the positive impact on their spouse is big, says Powdthavee. How big? Here's how Powdthavee puts it:

"It is significantly greater than the effect of owning a house outright; it can completely offset the non-[financial] cost of unemployment; it is equal to not having to spend around two months in the hospital last year.

In other words, happiness can be contagious -- in a good way -- in marriage, even for a partner facing burdens. Of course, some people, by nature, are happier than others, and Powdthavee's research take that into account. Powdthavee concludes:

This paper has shown that married people have become more satisfied with their life over the years merely because their spouses have become happier with theirs.

However, there's a twist. The happiness data hinges on marriage. The same results weren't seen among unmarried couples who lived together, says Powdthavee.
The reasons for that aren't clear. Perhaps unmarried couples are less committed or tend to focus more on themselves, instead of on their partner's well-being over time, says Powdthavee. He says this is consistent with studies showing a higher break-up rate and eventual marriage failure by those cohabiting with a partner compared with a spouse. The findings were presented in Nottingham, UK, at the Royal Economic Society's annual conference.