Life is better in twos
Life is better in twos, at least according to the latest Eurostat results on life satisfaction. Couples with children are on average the most satisfied with life, but even if couples don’t have children they are likely to be better off than people who are on their own.
About one in four couples with kids across the EU reports to be very satisfied with life; the proportion reaches about half of the population in Austria, Finland and Iceland.
But while couples with two kids are quite evenly satisfied across Europe, having three or more children results in a larger variety of results. With more than two children views on life satisfaction are more polarized and varied across different countries.
You are pretty miserable if you have three kids and you live in Bulgaria (86% dissatisfied), while in most northern European countries less than 10 per cent of the population with three or more children are dissatisfied.
In Germany and France having an additional third child increases the proportion that are very satisfied, while in the UK and Italy a third child is associated with lower life satisfaction.
After couples with children, the next type of households most satisfied with life are couples without children, however satisfaction among this group also varies a lot across countries. More than one in three of them are very satisfied in the UK, but the proportion drops off to about one in six in Italy and France.
Contrary to the stereotype of free, wild and happy, young single man are on average the least satisfied in Europe, and quite uniformly so across different countries. The gap with couples with kids is particularly large in northern countries, while in Greece, Spain and Portugal being single has a smaller impact.
The results are in line with academic researchers who found that married people have better physical and psychological health and they live longer than single people. Other studies observed higher levels of reported happiness levels in married people than single, divorced, separated and widowed people for both men and women in different countries and time periods.
However not necessarily being a couple is what made people being more satisfied, at least to the results of an academic paper by Stutzer and Frey. In a panel spanning a period of 17 years, they found that singles who will get married are happier than persons who will stay single, particularly among young people. Moreover, they found that people who get divorced were not only less happy during marriage but also less happy before they got married.
But that study was based in Germany before the last decade and not necessarily applies to everyone.
So take the chance and look for someone to share your life with and have lots of children. This obviously only if you want to maximise your level of life satisfaction.
If you want to have fun, it’s a different story.
All data refers to latest Eurostat data (2013)
No comments:
Post a Comment