Subjective Well-Being and Partnership Dynamics: Are Same-Sex Relationships Different?

Shuai Chen and Jan van Ours

No 11043, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

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)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap and nep-ltv
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Published - published in: Demography, 2018, 55 (6), 2299-2320.

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https://docs.iza.org/dp11043.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Subjective Well-being and Partnership Dynamics: Are Same-Sex Relationships Different? (2018)
Working Paper: Subjective Well-being and Partnership Dynamics; Are Same-sex Relationships Different? (2017)
Working Paper: Subjective Well-being and Partnership Dynamics; Are Same-Sex Relationships Different? (2017)
Working Paper: Subjective Well-being and Partnership Dynamics; Are Same-sex Relationships Different? (2017)
Working Paper: Subjective Well-being and Partnership Dynamics; Are Same-sex Relationships Different? (2017)
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