What Measuring Happiness Reveals About Marriage and Money

Reporting what makes us happy, University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman places marriage and income at the top of his list.

Measuring Happiness

Starting broadly, he used a survey’s mean happiness score of 22 to conclude that American adults have been happy during the past 50 years. That 22 signifies that out of every 100 people, there are 22 more happy people than sad ones:

Gender

Curious about gender, we would see women were happier than men during the 1970s. But then, after the two reversed in the 1990s, women pulled ahead from 2000 for almost 20 years, and more recently became pretty equal.

Marriage

Looking for happiness, the one place to find it seems to be marriage. However, Dr. Peltzman was not sure if marriage brought happiness or that less happy/difficult to live with people remained single:

Education

Looking at education, we would see that people with less education tilted toward less happiness. On a graph, individuals that had attended college were most happy. Next came high school graduates, and then people who had not completed high school.

Income

At this point, by adding income, we wind up with the main keys to happiness. However, the happiness was concentrated in the top income quintile:

Race

In addition, Dr. Peltzman said that race made a difference:

Trust

And finally, to end with a smile, we can skip other metrics and look at trust. As you might expect, trust in people and government brought people more happiness:

Our Bottom Line: The Economic Significance of Happiness

At this point we should consider a 2023 NBER paper that includes why economists care about happiness. Explaining, they initialy identify short-run happiness like elation and the long-run happiness of a baseline mood. Predictably, our short-term happiness provides information about our preferences (and I assume our demand). By contrast, looking at the long-run takes us to policy issues.

My sources and more: Having posted Sam Peltzman’s research on the Peltzman effect and measuring happiness, I was delighted to discover his happiness infographics. Next, with more of a conceptual focus, this paper was an appropriate complement. And finally, you might enjoy, as did I, returning to Dr. Peltzman’s 2023 happiness paper.