Do people really adapt to marriage?

Richard E. Lucas and Andrew Clark ()

PSE Working Papers from PSE (Ecole normale supérieure)

Abstract: Although cross-sectional studies have shown a reliable association between marital status and subjective well-being, a recent longitudinal study (Lucas, Clark, Georgellis, & Diener, 2003) found no support for the idea that happiness increases after marriage. Instead, participants who got married reported short-term increases followed by complete adaptation back to baseline levels of well-being. However, researchers have criticized this study on two grounds. First, these results contradict cohort-based analyses from a nationally representative sample. Second, these analyses do not control for pre-marriage cohabitation, which could potentially inflate baseline levels of well-being. The original data (plus four additional waves) are reanalyzed to address these concerns. Results confirm that individuals do not get a lasting boost in life satisfaction following marriage.

Date: Written 2005
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.pse.ens.fr/document/wp200541.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: DO PEOPLE REALLY ADAPT TO MARRIAGE? (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pse:psecon:2005-41

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in PSE Working Papers from PSE (Ecole normale supérieure)
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().