365 Reasons to Stay Married

No Happy Ending for Divorced Boomers
July 09, 2007
Stephen Lunn
Social affairs writer

Australia's first wave of baby-boomer divorcees are far less happy as they approach retirement and suffer more physical and mental health problems than their married friends.

No matter how many years have passed since their split, members of the growing grey army of over-55 divorcees without a new partner are likely to be less satisfied with life than a married person.

And to confirm it is divorce that has the negative effect on wellbeing, divorced women who remain single are less happy than widows in the same situation.

Groundbreaking research to be presented later this week by the Australian Institute of Family Studies paints a disturbing picture of the long-term impact of divorce on the emotional health and circumstances of those in their mid-50s and above.

The report, Divorce and the Wellbeing of Older Australians, will be unveiled at the Australian social policy conference in Sydney. It has telling implications for government policy on health and welfare in coming decades, co-author Matthew Gray says.

Dr Gray, the institute's deputy director, said the consequences of divorce on younger people had been studied before, but little was known about the impact of separation on those who were in or near retirement.

"Until recently the numbers of divorced older people was relatively small, but it has grown rapidly in recent times. The baby boomers are moving through and they are more likely to be divorced than previous generations, mainly due to shifting social norms and no-fault divorce," Dr Gray said.

"We are talking about a significant section of the population here. In 1996, 9.6 per cent of those aged 50-59 had been divorced. In 2006 it was 15 per cent, and it is likely to continue to grow even faster in the future."

Using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, Dr Gray and his co-authors, including leading social sciences professor David de Vaus, examined a series of wellbeing measures for divorced and married Australians over 55, including social connections and support, life satisfaction, and mental and physical health.

"When it came to questions about overall satisfaction with life, the neighbourhood you live in, etcetera, those who had been divorced reported worse outcomes than those never divorced. It was particularly so for women," Dr Gray said.

"For instance, the statement 'I often feel very lonely' was put to married and never-divorced women, and divorced and still-single women.

"In the first group, 67 per cent disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, compared with 50 per cent for the second group. Statistically, that is a fairly big difference."

Dr Gray said women reported "significantly worse physical and mental health if they were divorced and still single".

The research followed work published by the same team in February that covered the financial consequences of divorce for older people.

The study concluded that "older divorced single Australians are much more likely to experience material hardships than the married never-divorced", with home ownership, asset levels and income all lower for divorced people.

The two research papers showed that "there are negative financial consequences of divorce in older age, and divorce has a negative effect more generally on wellbeing later in life," Dr Gray said.

"But it is not all negative. If people remarry following divorce, a lot of their financial position can be recovered, and those who have remarried look pretty similar on most measures of wellbeing to their long-term married friends."

Divorce hits men harder
Statscan
May 22, 2007
Lorrayne Anthony
Canadian press

"What we tend to forget in many instances, for the men in particular, they see children all but removed from their lives, which is a huge impact on your life."

The study said the relationship between marital breakup and depression was independent of other factors associated with breakups changes in household income, social support or the number of children in the household.

The stereotype might be that a man relishes trading his wife for a fast car or a younger woman, but a new study finds that men appear to take separation harder than women.

While both men and women whose marriages have dissolved have a higher risk of being depressed than people who remained with their spouses, a Statistics Canada study found that men who had divorced or separated were six times more likely to report an episode of depression compared with men who remained married.

Women who had undergone marital breakups were 3.5 times more likely to have had bouts of depression than their counterparts who were still in relationships.

The survey found that 12 per cent of people who were no longer in a relationship reported a new episode of depression, while just three per cent of those who remained in a relationship had suffered new depression.

Michelle Rotermann, the author of the study, said she was surprised, and also not surprised, by the results.

"On the one hand we know depression in general tends to be more common among women, but there is also a lot of evidence that shows that men have fewer social supports and social support does seem to play a role," she said.

"Perhaps one of the reasons why men are more at risk of experiencing subsequent depression is because one of their main sources of social support is their partner, their spouse, and now she is no longer there," said Rotermann, an analyst at Statistics Canada.

Nineteen per cent of men who were no longer with their spouse found a decline in social support, while only six per cent of men who remained in a relationship found a drop. Among women the proportions were 11 per cent for those no longer in a relationship and five for those who were.

Jenni Tipper, a research associate with the Vanier Institute of the Family in Ottawa, said "typically women are much better at building and maintaining social supports, which isn't often the case for men."

After a breakup, women tended to live in households with an income ranking far below that of their male counterparts. In fact, nearly 30 per cent of recently divorced or separated men actually experienced an improvement in the ranking of their adjusted household income, the study reported.

The study found that 34 per cent of men and three per cent of women were residing with at least one less child after the breakdown of their relationship.

Tipper said the study is a good reminder that the breakdown of a marriage is an extremely challenging transition for everybody involved.

"We sometimes tend to think that it's the woman who bears the brunt of a divorce outcome. And there is no question that women experience higher levels of economic strife," Tipper said. "What we tend to forget in many instances, for the men in particular, they see children all but removed from their lives, which is a huge impact on your life."

The study said the relationship between marital breakup and depression was independent of other factors associated with breakups changes in household income, social support or the number of children in the household.

More than three-quarters of those who suffered depression in the post-relationship period were no longer depressed four years after the breakup, the findings show.

"It sort of suggests that, for the majority, the effects of your relationship breaking up ... people seem to get back on their feet but there is this significant minority for whom trouble seems to persist," said Rotermann.

The study was based on longitudinal data from the National Population Health Survey, which was taken at two-year intervals between 1994 and 2005. The 7,614 respondents were between the ages of 20 and 64, and free of depression and in a relationship the first time they were interviewed.

Global Sex Survey: Marrieds Do It More Than Teens
FoxNews.com
October 31, 2006

LONDON ‹ In the first comprehensive global study of sexual behavior, British researchers found that people aren't losing their virginity at ever younger ages, married people have the most sex, and there is no firm link between promiscuity and sexually transmitted diseases.

The study was published Wednesday as part of a series on sexual and reproductive health by the British medical journal, The Lancet. Professor Kaye Wellings of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicines and her colleagues analyzed data from 59 countries worldwide.

Experts say data gleaned from the study will be useful not only in dispelling popular myths about sexual behavior, but in shaping policies that will help improve sexual health across the world. Researchers looked at previously published studies on sexual behavior in the last decade. They also used data from national governments worldwide. Wellings noted that since the survey results were based on self-reporting, they could be susceptible to error.

Wellings said she was surprised by some of the survey's results.

"We did have some of our preconceptions dashed," she said, explaining that they had expected to find the most promiscuous behavior in regions like Africa with the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases. That was not the case, as multiple partners were more commonly reported in industrialized countries where the incidence of such diseases was relatively low.

"There's a misperception that there's a great deal of promiscuity in Africa, which is one of the potential reasons for HIV/AIDS spreading so rapidly," said Dr. Paul van Look, director of Reproductive Health and Research at the World Health Organization, who was unconnected to the study. "But that view is not supported by the evidence."

Wellings says that implies that promiscuity may be less important than factors such as poverty and education -- especially in the encouragement of CONDOM USE -- in the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. The survey found that single men and women in Africa were fairly sexually inactive: only two thirds of them reported recent sexual activity, compared with three quarters of their counterparts in developed countries.

The study also found that contrary to popular belief, sexual activity is not starting any earlier than commonly believed. Nearly everywhere, men and women have their first sexual experiences in their late teens (aged 15-19 years), with generally younger ages for women than for men.

Still, there are considerable discrepancies across countries. In the United Kingdom, for example, men and women tend to lose their virginity at ages 16.5 and 17.5 respectively. In comparison, men and women in Indonesia waited until they were 24.5 and 18.5 respectively before crossing the sexual threshold.

Researchers also found that married people have the most sex, and that there has been a gradual shift to delay marriage, even in developing countries.

While that has meant a predictable rise in the rates of premarital sex, experts say this doesn't necessarily translate into more dangerous behavior.

In some instances, married women may be at more risk than single women.

"A single woman is more able to negotiate safe sex in certain circumstances than a married woman," says van Look, who points out that married women in Africa and Asia are often threatened by unfaithful husbands who frequent prostitutes.

There is much greater equality between women and men with regard to the number of sexual partners in rich countries than in poor countries, the study found. For example, men and women in Australia, Britain, France and the U.S. tend to have an almost equal number of sexual partners.

In contrast, in Cameroon, Haiti, and Kenya, men tend to have multiple partners while women tend only to have one. This imbalance has significant public health implications.

"In countries where women are beholden to their male partners, they are likely not to have the power to request condom use, and they probably won't know about their husbands' transgressions," said Wellings.

Because of the diversity of sexual habits worldwide, Wellings warns that no single approach to sexual health will work everywhere. "There are very different economic, religious and social rules governing sexual conduct across the world," Wellings said.

Happy Wives, Happier Marriages
Study suggests joy of marriage may be contagious
By Brynn Mandel
October 24, 2004

A happy wife makes a happy marriage.
So says Mel Prince, a Southern Connecticut State University marketing professor who recently completed a study examining job and life satisfaction among 86 working, married couples.

Wives, Prince's research found, wield more influence than husbands in determining the happiness of a marriage. It comes as little surprise to some greater Waterbury women-several of whom already believed they had more bearing on their relationships than men might like to let on.

Prince's advice to women: "Make yourself happy. That will naturally infuse itself to your husband. Happiness radiates in marriage. So does unhappiness."

And by happy, he does not mean just within the relationship, but an overall contentment in life. It works like this: if a wife is happy, that happiness can have what Prince calls a crossover, or contagion, effect. Yep, husbands can catch happiness.

To Dawn Schuster, who spends most days listening to details of women's- and sometimes men's-lives as a stylist in her Naugatuck salon, Savoir Hair, Prince's findings seemed right on.

"We kind of organize their lives," the mother of two said, joking of her own other half: "Bill doesn't know where the toilet paper is (stored)."

Echoed Diane Wachtel, another stylist: "I think men just seem to go with the flow most of the time." Both ladies agreed that, based on their observations and interactions with other women, wives' attitudes can have a "huge" difference on a relationship's dynamics.

But before women start relishing their roles as rulers of their households' happiness, Prince cautioned: the balance is only slightly skewed in females' favor. Women's influence on wedded bliss is about 10 percent greater than men's, he estimated.

Of course, there are other factors that can influence a marriage, regardless of how fulfilled, happy or even Pollyanna-ish a woman may be.

"You could have a difficult husband," said Prince, offering financial and health problems as other, sometimes insurmountable obstacles to a joyous union.

Prince hypothesized that women weild this greater influence because they are more in touch with their feelings than men, and better able to articulate and express those feelings.

But at least two women, both of whom had been married for several decades, had different perspectives. "In our case it's probably equal," said Ruth Braziel, of Naugatuck, pondering who could take credit for the happiness of her 52-year marriage. Then she amended her answer: "It's my husband, because he's the greatest- great sense of humor, great father-the perfect idea of a husband."

A half-century, five children, 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren later, the Braziels still have a regular date night, said Braziel, bragging:

"We're really proud of our marriage." Prince's latest research, which typically encompasses sociology, psychology and advertising, evolved from studies of employees' responses to work environments and job satisfaction.

The study reaffirmed some widely held perceptions, such as the way men are driven by power, pay and status. But women regarded enjoyment of their work and a sense of accomplishment as more satisfying than salary.

Prince will present the study at the International Society of Quality of Life Studies conference in Philadelphia Nov. 10 through 14.

Copyright (c) 2004 Republican-American

Study Adds up the Riches of Marriage
By Gail Marksjarvis
The Pioneer Press
August 22, 2004

If you are too busy to baby-sit your finances or earn a $100,000 raise, it may be easier to secure your happiness by building your marriage or finding a spouse.

I know this is unusual advice from a financial columnist. After all, I normally try to help you develop your wealth, not your marital bliss.

But in the long run, marrying and staying married may get you further than an IRA because it apparently takes a lot of extra money to mend a lonely heart.

This is not my contention. Nor does it come from a sociologist, psychologist, clergy person or other expert on values or human emotions. Instead, the conclusion originates from an unlikely source ‹ a pair of prominent economists who used econometric methods to put a price tag on situations that interfere with happiness.

David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College and Andrew Oswald of Warwick University found that unmarried people, as a group, are significantly less happy than married people, and it takes a big chunk of change to make them feel better.

The economists calculate that unmarried people would need $100,000 in additional income each year to be happier. They studied responses to questions about happiness from 16,000 randomly selected U.S. residents, and found that richer people are systematically more satisfied with their lives. Even so, marital status, gender, age, race, unemployment, sexual behavior and whether a person's parents were divorced all play a major role in happiness.

"Money buys you happiness, but not as much as you'd think," says Blanchflower. "Well-being is greatest among women, married people, the highly educated and those whose parents did not divorce," his research shows.

Meanwhile, well-being is very low among unemployed men, who would need an additional $60,000 a year to overcome the pain of joblessness.

In contrast to younger adults, happiness also diminishes for people after age 40. And people in second marriages and black Americans are less happy.

Over the decades, however, blacks have become happier on average, probably because discrimination is less pronounced, the researchers speculate. Still, they say, blacks would need an additional $30,000 a year "to compensate for being black."

Typically, economists have assumed that higher incomes and consumption provide people with greater satisfaction. But a growing body of economic research is suggesting that while money helps people find happiness, it is not as powerful as thought.

In fact, Blanchflower notes that if happiness came from wealth, Americans should be happier now than ever before because the gross domestic product (a measure of prosperity) keeps climbing. Instead, Americans have become less happy while the nation has grown richer.

In a 1957 general social survey, 53 percent of Americans said they considered themselves "very happy." By the early 1970s, only 34 percent expressed such satisfaction. Late in the 1990s, the number was down to 30 percent.

"The U.S.A. has, in aggregate, apparently become more miserable over the last quarter of a century," according to the economists. Their working paper, "Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study," was recently published by the respected National Bureau of Economic Research. To find out more about the paper, go to http://papers.nber.org/papers/W10499.

In the paper, the economists also challenge the notion that people with more money have happier sex lives. "Money does not buy more sex," they report, but those individuals who had sex more frequently are happier. The median American adult has sexual intercourse about two to three times a month, according to the economists. Yet, people who have sex once a month would need $50,000 more a year in income to be as happy as those who have sex once a week.

People who paid for sex or had sex outside of marriage reported "notably less happiness scores," according to the economists.

Married people also reported having sex more often than single, divorced or widowed people. As the researchers examined situations that can enhance or detract from a person's well-being, they attached a dollar value to each unit of happiness. They did not examine cause and effect questions. For example, they did not determine if marriage made people happy, or if inherently happy people built strong marriages.

They also did not examine in-depth why happiness levels have fallen since the 1950s. Still, they found that being single, divorced or widowed is a major source of unhappiness, and men are particularly unhappy when they must care for a home.

Overall, men have grown happier in recent years, while women's sense of well-being has fallen. Blanchflower speculates that women's declining well-being may be partially because of the pressures faced in the workplace and commuting to work. Before women commonly held jobs, their happiness levels were significantly higher than men's. But "as they have become more equal, women have become less happy," Blanchflower says.

Another possibility for the general slippage in happiness: keeping up with the Joneses. Research by Alois Stutzer of the University of Zurich shows that higher income aspirations reduce people's satisfaction with life.

Emotional Benefits of Marriage
Peter Hadfield - New Scientist
October 2, 2002

Contrary to popular belief, marriage gives men and women an equal mental health boost, a study in Australia shows.

In 1972, sociologist Jessie Bernard looked at symptoms of anxiety, depression, neurosis and passivity in married and unmarried people. She found that men were better off married than single, and concluded that they got those benefits at the expense of women. That became a central tenet of the women's liberation movement in the 1970s, and is still often cited. But psychologist David de Vaus from La Trobe University in Melbourne points out that Bernard's research only looked at a narrow definition of stress. "It is well known that women are much more likely to score highly on those disorders," he says. Most research has ignored the fact that mental disorder can manifest itself in men in the form of drug and alcohol abuse, de Vaus claims.

De Vaus looked at data from 10,641 adults taken from the 1996 national survey of mental health in Australia, which includes drug abuse among its indicators of stress.

In the winter issue of Family Matters, the journal of the Australian Institute of Family Studies, de Vaus writes that the percentage of married men and women suffering stress was the same, at just 13 per cent.

Work and kids

He also found that 25 per cent of both women and men were miserable when single. Married women with children and a job had the fewest mental health problems of the female sample, suggesting that kids are not as stress-inducing as some parents like to claim.

The findings add hard data to ideas already taking hold in the US. In 2001, Linda Waite's book The Case for Marriage: Why married people are happier, healthier and better off financially cited other studies that overturn Bernard's theories.

Psychologists are now debating whether Bernard's conclusions have always been flawed, or whether women have become genuinely happier inside marriage over the past 30 years.