EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Subjective Well-being and Partnership Dynamics; Are Same-sex Relationships Different?

Jan C. van Ours and Shuai Chen

No 12320, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Partnered individuals are happier than singles. This can be because partnership leads to more satisfactory subjective well-being or because happier people are more likely to find a partner. We analyze Dutch panel data to investigate whether there is a causal effect of partnership on subjective well-being. Our data allow us to distinguish between marriage and cohabitation and between same-sex partnerships and opposite-sex ones. Our results support the short-term crisis model and adaptation theory. We find that marital partnership improves well-being and that these benefits are homogeneous to sexual orientation. The well-being gains of marriage are larger than those of cohabitation. Investigating partnership formation and disruption, we discover that the well-being effects are symmetric. Finally, we find that marriage improves well-being for both younger and older cohorts while cohabitation only benefits younger cohort.

Keywords: Subjective well-being; Happiness; Marriage; Cohabitation; Sexual orientation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP12320 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Subjective Well-being and Partnership Dynamics: Are Same-Sex Relationships Different? (2018) Downloads
Working Paper: Subjective Well-Being and Partnership Dynamics: Are Same-Sex Relationships Different? (2017) Downloads
Working Paper: Subjective Well-being and Partnership Dynamics; Are Same-Sex Relationships Different? (2017) Downloads
Working Paper: Subjective Well-being and Partnership Dynamics; Are Same-sex Relationships Different? (2017) Downloads
Working Paper: Subjective Well-being and Partnership Dynamics; Are Same-sex Relationships Different? (2017) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12320

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP12320

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().

 
Page updated 2024-10-29
Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12320