The Life Satisfaction Advantage of Being Married and Gender Specialization
| Author | Małgorzata Mikucka |
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12290 |
M M Université Catholique de Louvain,
National Research University Higher School of Economics
The Life Satisfaction Advantage of Being Married
and Gender Specialization
This investigation examined whether the life
satisfaction advantage of married over unmar-
ried people decreased over the past 3 decades
and whether the changes in contextual gender
specialization explained this trend. Contex-
tual gender specialization was dened as a
country-year-specic share of married women
who fully specialize in household work. The
author used representative data from the World
Values Survey–European Values Study inte-
grated data set for 87 countries (N=292,525)
covering a period of 29 years (1981–2009).
The results showed that the life satisfaction
advantage of being married decreased over time
among men but not among women. Furthermore,
the decline of contextual gender specialization
correlated with this trend in developed butnot in
developing countries. In developed countries the
life satisfaction of unmarried people increased
as the contextual gender specialization declined,
whereas the life satisfaction of married people
was not affected.
A large body of literature shows that married
people are happier and more satised with their
lives than unmarried persons (see, e.g., Gove,
Centre for Demographic Research, Université Catholique
de Louvain, Place Montesquieu, 1 bte L2.08.03,
B-1348-Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
(mikucka.m@gmail.com,
malgorzata.mikucka@uclouvain.be).
Key Words: families and individuals in societal contexts,
family economics, gender roles, marriage, trends, well-be-
ing.
Style, & Hughes, 1990; Mastekaasa, 1994; Stack
& Eshleman, 1998; Verbakel, 2012), yet grow-
ing divorce and cohabitation rates and falling
marriage and fertility rates suggest a “retreat
from marriage” (see, e.g., Adams, 2004; Cherlin,
2004; Huston & Melz, 2004; Popenoe, 1993).
Research shows that the life satisfaction advan-
tage of being married (dened as the differ-
ence between the population-based averages of
the life satisfaction of married and unmarried
persons) has decreased over time in the United
States (Glenn & Weaver, 1988). This suggests
that marriages in contemporary societies have
become less advantageous than they were in
the past.
Over recent decades, another change has
occurred: Men and women now allocate their
time in a more similar way than they did in
the past (Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, & Robinson,
2000). The employment of women, even those
who are married and have children, is now
accepted in most developed countries (Brewster
& Rindfuss, 2000; Sayer & Bianchi, 2000). The
general trend is of a decline in specialization,
dened as gendered divisions of tasks within
married couples between the labor market (typ-
ically assigned to men) and the household work
(typically performed by women). Although
theoretical approaches in both economics and
sociology postulate that married couples benet
from gender specialization within marriages
(e.g., Becker, 1981; Parsons, 1949; Stevenson
& Wolfers, 2007), the relationship between
specialization and the life satisfaction advantage
of being married has so far received little
attention.
Journal of Marriage and Family 78 (June 2016): 759–779 759
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12290
760 Journal of Marriage and Family
The contribution of this article is twofold.
First, I describe how the relationship between
marriage and life satisfaction has changed
over time and across countries. The second
contribution is to verify whether macro-level
characteristics—in particular, the contextual
gender specialization—account for the changes
to the life satisfaction advantage of being
married.
C O T L
S A B M
Previous research has investigated changes to
the life satisfaction advantage of being married
over recent decades, providing mixed results.
Waite (2000) compared the population averages
of the well-being of married persons versus
never-married and previously married per-
sons over the period 1972–1996 in the United
States and found no signicant shift in the
life satisfaction advantage of being married.
In contrast, Glenn and Weaver (1988) showed
a decline in the cross-sectional relationship
between marital status and declared happiness
over the period 1972–1986, which mainly was
due to the negative trend of life satisfaction
among married women and a positive trend
among never-married men. Both Waite (2000)
and Glenn and Weaver focused on population
averages; moreover, both examined the case of
the United States using data from the General
Social Survey.
If the life satisfaction advantage of being
married decreases, it may be due to a lowered
satisfaction of married persons or to increased
life satisfaction of unmarried persons. The for-
mer has been examined by studies that have
investigated changes in marital quality, marital
interaction, and marital conict. For instance,
Waite (2000) and Glenn (1991) showed that the
percentage of married men and women who
declared that their marriage was very happy
has been declining slightly in the United States
since the 1970s. Similarly, Amato, Johnson,
Booth, and Rogers (2003) showed that in the
United States during the years 1980–2000 mar-
ital interactions declined, even though marital
quality and divorce proneness changed little. In
a similar vein, Rogers and Amato (2000) pro-
vided evidence that the cohort married between
1981 and 1997 reported less interaction and
more marital conict than the cohort married
between 1964 and 1980. However,Corra, Carter,
Carter, and Knox (2009) found no consistent
trend of satisfaction with marriage during the
years 1973–2006 across groups of White and
Black husbands and wives. In contrast to these
predominantly negative results, the life satis-
faction of unmarried people, in particular men,
increased during the 1970s and the 1980s (Glenn
& Weaver, 1988; G. R. Lee, Seccombe, & She-
han, 1991). In sum, the majority of these results
suggest that the life satisfaction advantages of
marriage are declining over time.
G S M
The decline of gender specialization is part of
a broader transformation of marriage and fam-
ily known as the Second Demographic Transi-
tion (Lesthaeghe, 2010). Theoretical approaches
offer at least four arguments why declining gen-
der specialization may be at the root of the
declining life satisfaction advantage of being
married.
First, declining gender specialization may
directly lower the well-being of married couples.
According to the economic household model
(Becker, 1981), gender specialization increases
the overall productivity of the household; its
wealth; and, therefore, the life satisfaction of
the couple (Stutzer & Frey, 2006). Similar to
Becker’s (1981) economic model, the sociolog-
ical stream of functionalism theorized that the
division of roles between men and women and
their complementarity was functional for the
institution of the family (Parsons, 1949). Both
theories suggest that declining gender special-
ization may erode part of the benets of mar-
riage. Specialization in the couple intuitively
should play a role; however, at the individual
level specialization is endogenous to being in
a good relationship (e.g., in bad relationships
women seek employment to increase their inde-
pendence; Oppenheimer, 1997). Thus, the rela-
tionship between individual specialization and
life satisfaction advantage from marriage would
reect, at least in part, self-selection. The focus
on contextual gender specialization of this article
helps overcome this limitation.
Second, declining gender specialization
might have improved the living conditions of
unmarried people. Technological progress in
household appliances, as well as the market
availability of goods and services that replace
those produced within the household (washing
machines, ready-made meals, etc.) decrease
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