Behavior/Humans

The Secret of Happy Marriage: A Smart Wife

Men, 8% happier for each year of education of their wifes

By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor

24th of July 2007, 18:46 GMT

Adjust text size:

A sexy bimbo would make you happy, isn't it? She's sensual and always ready to do what you want; moreover, you dominate and manipulate. In the end, you could fool her for a lifetime, without marrying her.

But a new research carried on by doctoral candidate Shane Worner of Australian National University reveals that married people

are happier than unmarried people, and men who marry educated women are happier than men who do it with uneducated ones are.

The study was made on a pool of 5,000 subjects, asked to rank their happiness level on a scale from one to ten, while their marital status was known. Worner encountered a 135% higher likelihood that married men will report a high happiness compared to single men. Instead, married women are just 52% happier than their unmarried counterparts.

Bachelors were found to gain $136,000 annually more in their incomes to achieve the happiness levels as that brought by marriage. In case of single women, this sum was of $122,000.

Worner also detected a U-shaped curve of satisfaction levels linked to the time of marriage for both genders. Individuals are less happy one or two years before marriage, very happy around the time of the marriage, and then experience another drop in happiness after marriage.

The most surprising discovery of the research was that a man's happiness level grew by 8% for each year of education his wife had. A woman with a bachelor's degree could make her husband 32% happier than those who did not have it did. But this correlation was much weaker in case of women. Happiness also varied depending on the differences in years of education between the two.

"It may have something to do with personal preferences for certain characteristics in a partner. Women may prefer males that are higher educated than themselves to ensure financial security. Males may prefer the consumption benefits of a highly educated spouse. Or maybe it is just a case of negative assortative mating, that is, opposites really do attract.", Worner said.

TAGS:

marriage | education | happy

SEARCH THE NEWS ARCHIVE :

Today's News | Yesterday's News | News Archive

User opinions:

Comment #1 by: Lost Angel on 24 Jul 2007, 18:55 GMT	reply to this comment
or maybe it is bullshit statistics with feminist propaganda message of "lets push more wimmin into education"

Share your opinion:

SUBMIT PROGRAM \| ADVERTISE \| GET HELP \| SEND US FEEDBACK \| RSS FEEDS \| ENTER NEWS SITE \| ENGLISH BOARD \| ROMANIAN FORUM
© 2001 - 2008 Softpedia. All rights reserved. Softpedia™ and the Softpedia™ logo are registered trademarks of SoftNews NET SRL.	Copyright Information \| Privacy Policy \| Terms of Use \| Update your software \| Archive

NEWS CATEGORIES: