Is there a universal marriage premium in life satisfaction?

Is marriage, deemed by many studies a crucial determinant of life satisfaction, universally beneficial?

That marriage is taken for granted favorable for one's well-being across context and time confuses me, for the overestimation of and predilection for marriage's protective value on the part of sociologists is nothing new: theory-building rarely goes beyond the highly-politicized Western context.

This short post, therefore, shows how marriage is related to life satisfaction across the globe. It concerns not the theoretical origins of marriage nor its causal effects net of selection but merely the general associations from country-specific logistic regressions on the odds of being completely or very satisfied with life. Samples of married and never-married respondents are selected from the World Value Survey (WVS), Wave 7, and the European Value Survey (EVS), Wave 5.

Figure 1. Coefficient of Marriage on Life Satisfaction (Men)

Figure 1. Coefficient of Marriage on Life Satisfaction (Women)

Evidently, marriage premiums of life satisfaction are not universal. People in many parts of the world are not better off because of marriage. Of the 81 surveyed countries, only 51 have positive coefficients for men and 46 for women. If restricted by statistical significance, the number is further reduced to 22 and 23 for men and women, respectively.

In many countries, people suffer from marriage. These countries cluster geographically in the Middle East (Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, etc.), Eastern Europe (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine), and South America (Chile and Argentina).

Marriage premiums prevail in developed countries. The top 10 of the list look familiar: New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Australia, Finland, Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and China.

What contextual characteristics give rise to the differing outcomes of marriage? How does it change over the years? Good questions to ask. Next steps for research.