Marriage and Money: How Much Does Marriage Explain the Growing Class Divide in Happiness?
by Jean Twenge, @JEAN_TWENGE https://ifstudies.org/blog/marriage-and-money-how-much-does-marriage-explain-the-growing-class-divide-in-happiness What makes us happy? Many people would answer spending time with friends and family. But as it turns out, money can make a difference, too: There is happiness in not having to worry about paying your bills and in living in a comfortable and safe home. In a recent analysis of 40,000 Americans over age 30 in the General Social Survey, we found that people with more money were happier, as were people with more education and more prestigious jobs. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Because the survey data went back to the 1970s, we were able to measure whether the link between happiness and money changed over time. It has: happiness is now more strongly linked to money than it once was. Happiness is also more strongly linked to education and job prestige, other measures of socioeconomic status (SES). Among White Americans, the hap