Does Marriage Increase Couples’ Life Satisfaction?

Abstract

Many contemporary studies find that married couples are more satisfied with life than unmarried people. However, whether marriage makes people more satisfied with life or whether more satisfied couples are more likely to marry remains a debated question. We reassess this relationship with panel data from the German Family Panel (pairfam) and extend previous analyses by adding individual trajectories (slopes) to standard fixed-effects regressions (FEIS). We are thereby able to distinguish – controlling for time-constant unobserved heterogeneity – whether there is in fact an effect of marriage on life satisfaction, whether people who are simply happier in their relationship are more likely to get married, or whether people whose development in life satisfaction is more positive are more likely to get married. We translate these different social mechanisms into different analytical strategies and find that OLS regression – due to its confounding effects between and within persons – overestimates the effect of marriage on life satisfaction. A fixed-effects estimator reveals a much lower effect of marriage on life satisfaction for couples who marry compared to those who continue to live apart together or cohabitate. Additionally, using a FEIS estimator and adjusting for – non-linear – development of individual life satisfaction over time, suggests that this effect is in fact causal.
 * This article belongs to a special issue on "Identification of causal mechanisms in demographic research: The contribution of panel data".

Panel Data Analysis

“…Although this approach is not as certain as an RCT, it is often more ethical for many research questions and is generally preferable for causal estimates derived from observational data. Previous studies have used within-unit estimators such as fixed effects to examine a wide range of relationships: the determinants of life satisfaction (Gattig & Minkus 2021, Kapelle et al 2022, family dynamics and the gender wage gap (Schmitt & Auspurg 2022, Zoch 2023, the drivers of volunteering and pro-social behavior (Aksoy & Wiertz 2023, Dederichs & Kruse 2023, or the social consequences of extreme weather events (Hoffmann et al 2022, Rüttenauer 2023. In addition, panel data and Differencesin-Differences designs play an important role in assessing the impact of social policies (Conte Keivabu & Rüttenauer 2022, Kneip & Bauer 2009.…”