Marital Status, Marital Happiness, and Personal Happiness: Trends over Time and across Age Categories

• In Event: 098 - Regular Session. ASA Opportunities in Retirement Network: Issues in Retirement

Abstract

Increasing proportions of the American population are entering old age unmarried, both because of high divorce rates and decreasing lifetime marriage rates. Evidence shows that married people have higher levels of personal happiness and other dimensions of psychological well-being than never-married or formerly-married people. In addition, we know that marital happiness has a strong positive influence on psychological well-being, but marital happiness has been shown to decline both with length of marriage and over time. These trends suggest that personal happiness may be declining over time among older people due to changes in both marital status and marital happiness.

This analysis uses data from the General Social Survey from 1972 through 2014 to investigate changes over time in personal happiness across age categories and the relations of these changes to marital status and marital happiness. Building on prior analyses it adds explicit consideration of divorced and widowed persons, and a focus on changes within the older population.

Authors

• Gary R. Lee, Bowling Green State University

• Krista Kay Payne, Bowling Green State University