Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University recently conducted an analysis of 40,000 Americans over the age of 30, based on data compiled for the General Social Survey.
Twenge’s findings may come as a shock to some because she said in a post for the Institute of Family Studies that the data indicates that “people with more money were happier, as were people with more education and more prestigious jobs.
“But that wasn’t the end of the story. Because the survey data went back to the 1970s, we were able to measure whether the link between happiness and money changed over time.
“It has: happiness is now more strongly linked to money than it once was. Happiness is also more strongly linked to education and job prestige, other measures of socioeconomic status (SES).”
Hold on there, what about that maxim that “money can’t buy you happiness” we’ve all heard and repeated a thousand times in our lives? It turns out marriage is also a major factor in happiness and it is more prevalent among those with higher incomes and more advanced educations, according to Twenge.
“This growing marriage gap matters for happiness because married people are happier than unmarried people by a fairly large margin,” she said.
“In the GSS, for example, 42% of married Whites said they were very happy, compared to 22% of unmarried Whites; 33% of married Blacks said they were very happy, compared to 17% of unmarried Blacks.”
Go here for the rest of Twenge’s results and analysis.
