Reexamining the Case for Marriage: Union Formation and Changes in Well-being

“This article addresses open questions about the nature and meaning of the positive association between marriage and well-being, namely, the extent to which it is causal, shared with cohabitation, and stable over time. We relied on data from the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 2,737) and a modeling approach that controls for fixed differences between individuals by relating union transitions to changes in well-being. This study is unique in examining the persistence of changes in wellbeing as marriages and cohabitations progress (and potentially dissolve) over time. The effects of marriage and cohabitation are found to be similar across a range of measures tapping psychological well-being, health, and social ties. Where there are statistically significant differences, marriage is not always more advantageous. Overall, differences tend to be small and appear to dissipate over time, even when the greater instability of cohabitation is taken into account. [...]

Examined across a range of outcomes, we found the similarities between marriage and cohabitation to be more striking than the differences: Entering into any union improved psychological well-being and reduced contact with parents and friends. Direct marriage and marriage preceded by cohabitation were statistically indistinguishable in all outcomes examined, providing no evidence that premarital cohabitation has negative consequences for wellbeing or ties to family and friends. When union dissolutions were excluded from the analysis, there were no statistically significant differences between the married and cohabiting for depression, relationships with parents, contact with parents, or time with friends. [...] The married fared better in health than cohabitors, but the opposite was true of happiness and self-esteem. [...]

We found no evidence that marriage and cohabitation provide benefits over being single in the realm of social ties; indeed, entering into a union reduced contact with parents and social evenings with friends. In some ways, of course, it is not surprising that forming a coresidential relationship reduces time with others, as partners spend time together that cannot be spent elsewhere. These findings do not, however, support arguments in the literature that marriage expands social circles and does so to a greater extent than cohabitation (e.g., Nock, 1995). Our results are more consistent with Sarkisian and Gerstel’s (2008) assessment of marriage as a ‘‘greedy’’ institution — and suggest the same of cohabitation. [...] We found no change over time in the effects of marriage and cohabitation on ties with family and friends, suggesting that these ties do not rebound in the years following marriage or cohabitation.”

With as many as half of all marriages ending in divorce or separation (Goldstein, 1999; Raley & Bumpass, 2003), marriage is as likely to be temporary as it is to be a lifetime relationship.”

Here’s the link.

An update

i. I wrote about the exam/hospital stuff ect. on the twitter, I will not comment much more on that stuff here – go there for more info, I posted quite a few tweets about it (scroll down a bit and start from the bottom…). If you have questions/remarks related to that stuff, you can post them here though, I don’t mind. Anyway, right now I’m just glad it didn’t go any worse than it did, it was a very scary experience – I had enough of those kinds of episodes in my youth to consider the ‘found dead-in-bed from hypoglycemia’ one of the most likely scenarios when considering the question how I’d eventually die and the ‘severe hypoglycemia while sleeping’-fear has always been one of my biggest fears. I had an episode a few years back that required hospitalization as well, but that wasn’t sleep-related. I’ve not experienced anything like this in almost a decade. My room-mate will probably never see me completely ‘the same way’ again.

ii. Yesterday evening I started reading one of my christmas presents, Mistakes were made (but not by me). It’s pretty good, but I don’t think there’s a lot of new stuff in there to someone who’s read lesswrong and that kind of stuff for a while (at least not judging from the first 50 pages). I still like it though.

iii. Some data:

(From the website of the University of Leicester, direct link here). Most of Russia is pretty empty, the average population density is just 8,4 people/sq km – but regular readers of this blog will know that such average numbers can be quite misleading. 78% of the total population of Russia (110 million) live in the European part of Russia – and about 75% of Russia’s territory lies within Asia. The population (/40 million/) density of Siberia is 2.5 persons per km². Another way to put it – Siberia is (significantly) larger than Europe but the population of that area is about the same as Poland; the population of that enormous area is smaller than the population of countries such as Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain or Ukraine.

But Russia’s not the only big country with a low population density – actually, a lot of places on Earth are very empty, compared to the places where most humans live. Canada’s population is a bit smaller than Siberia’s (34,7 mil), and if you add the two, their combined population size is smaller than that of Germany – despite the fact that they cover roughly 23 million square kilometers, more than 15% of the total land area of Earth. Incidentally, just like it’s a bit problematic to consider ‘the population density of Russia’, the same problems arise when you take a closer look at Canada. Northern Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut) makes up roughly 40% of the total area of Canada but it has a total population of little more than 100.000 people.

If you add Antarctica (14 million sq km) to Canada and Siberia we’re at 37 million square kilometres, or roughly one-fourth of the total land area of Earth. Add Australia to the list as well and you’re at maybe 44,5 million square km, about 30% of the total land area – and we’ve still not yet reached 100 million people combined. Remember that there are more than 7 billion people to account for – we’re clearly looking the wrong places. For fun, you can add Greenland, Mongolia, Namibia, Mauritania and others to the list yourself. There are a lot of relatively empty places on Earth and the empty areas are not small by any means. Here’s one way to look at ‘the big picture‘ (but again, averages can be deceiving):

One thing to remember here is that it isn’t just countries with low total populations that contain large empty areas – countries with huge populations often contain likewise huge areas with very low population densities. It’s easy to forget that a big total population combined with a big total area doesn’t mean that the country/area is not subject to large regional variations all the same; actually there are a few reasons why it seems quite obvious to me that the default hypothesis should rather be that d(var(population density))/d(total land area) should be positive. China is the country with the largest population on Earth, but the Tibet Autonomous Region has a population density comparable to Siberia (2,2/km2) and that area covers more than a million square kilometres. Another example would be Alaska in the US. Or consider Egypt:

(Wikipedia). “The great majority of its over 81 million people[3] live near the banks of the Nile River, in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers”. “Nearly 100% of the country’s 80,810,912[1] (2011 est.) people live in three major regions of the country: Cairo and Alexandria and elsewhere along the banks of the Nile; throughout the Nile delta, which fans out north of Cairo; and along the Suez Canal.” (link) The country has millions and millions of people, but actually most of it is almost completely empty because people just can’t live there.