Single women are NOT happier than married women. Quite the opposite.

The other day I saw a post on this subreddit claiming single women were happier than married women, claiming that "some brief Google searches" support that claim. I have also seen that statement made many times on reddit and other social media, usually mixed with some "men suck" message.

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Where does this idea come from? A couple of years ago, a researcher called Paul Dolan) made this claim based on his own research when promoting a new book. This claim then got plastered all over popular media outlets. However, there is a problem, that claim is completely mistaken, as it is based on fatally flawed research, and the author himself had to retract.

A new book says married women are miserable. Don’t believe it.

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Last week, a shocking claim about happiness made the rounds in the press, from the Guardian to Cosmopolitan to Elle to Fox.

The claim?

Women should be wary of marriage — because while married women say they’re happy, they’re lying. According to behavioral scientist Paul Dolan, promoting his recently released book Happy Every After, they’ll be much happier if they steer clear of marriage and children entirely.

“Married people are happier than other population subgroups, but only when their spouse is in the room when they’re asked how happy they are. When the spouse is not present: f***ing miserable,” Dolan said, citing the American Time Use Survey, a national survey available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and used for academic research on how Americans live their lives.

The problem? That finding is the result of a grievous misunderstanding on Dolan’s part of how the American Time Use Survey works. The people conducting the survey didn’t ask married people how happy they were, shoo their spouses out of the room, and then ask again. Dolan had misinterpreted one of the categories in the survey, “spouse absent,” which refers to married people whose partner is no longer living in their household, as meaning the spouse stepped out of the room.

Oops.

The error was caught by Gray Kimbrough, an economist at American University’s School of Public Affairs, who uses the survey data — and realized that Dolan must have gotten it wrong. “I’ve done a lot with time-use data,” Kimbrough told me. “It’s a phone survey.” The survey didn’t even ask if a respondent’s spouse was in the room.

I’m no “happiness expert” and don’t have strong ideological feelings about whether everyone should be getting married or not, but I have done a ton of research with the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which he said he based his statements on. And the claims felt weird to me. 2/ pic.twitter.com/CiClkj3rb3
— Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) June 1, 2019

First of all, there’s this statement: that when a married woman’s spouse is not “in the room,” she’s “fucking miserable.” I know that this information isn’t included in the ATUS, so I reached out to him. He has since retracted this statement and will correct it in his book. 3/ pic.twitter.com/HxcgKf0YfV
— Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) June 1, 2019

Dolan confirmed to me by email, “We did indeed misinterpret the variable. Some surveys do code whether people are present for the interview but in this instance it refers to present in the household. I have contacted the Guardian who have amended the piece and my editor so that we can make the requisite changes to the book. The substance of my argument that marriage is generally better for men than for women remains.”

Kimbrough disputes that, too, arguing that Dolan’s other claims also “fall apart with a cursory look at the evidence,” as he told me.

The citation in that second paragraph crucially does not say that there are no benefits to women marrying, only that they are \not as large as benefits to men*. An older article he cited earlier claims that unmarried women have 50% higher mortality rates than married women. 7/* pic.twitter.com/zRGJL82A5K
— Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) June 1, 2019

Next, the claim that “healthiest and happiest population subgroup are women who never married or had children.” The ATUS lacks data on \ever* having children, but I can compare never/ever married with and without children in the household. This doesn’t back up his claim. 8/* pic.twitter.com/wt1Q8fVQru
— Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) June 1, 2019

In the meantime, don’t trust shocking claims with a single source, even if they’re from a well-regarded expert. It’s all too easy to misread a study, and all too easy for those errors to make it all the way to print.

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So, now that we know Dolan's claim is complete nonsense, and that people should check their sources before claiming them as truth (Paul Dolan has a section on Wikipedia#Happy_Ever_After) explaining his claims were mistaken), we should focus on what the actual science says. Are single women actually happier than married women? There's an article written in response to this controversy, and the science is clear, married women are happier than single women:

Even so, Dolan’s book has managed to reignite an important debate: Is it bad for women to be married?

According to science, no. Historically, large studies show that, on average, married people report greater happiness later in life than unmarried people. Separated and divorced people tend to fall into a less-happy bucket, while the never-married and widowed fall someplace in between. Studies also report upticks in happiness in the lead-up to weddings and just after—the so-called “honeymoon effect”—though this benefit to happiness gradually wanes to slightly above pre-wedding levels over time. These positive effects of marriage on happiness are there for both women and men. 

Some suggest, however, that married people are happier because they were happier to begin with. While studies do show that happier people are more likely to get—and stay—married, this does not fully explain the relationship. Happy people who get married still end up happier than happy people who don’t. The relationship between marriage and happiness is, like most things in psychological science, bi-directional. In other words, it’s what you do to foster happiness as an individual and a spouse that makes a difference, not marriage all by itself. “Marriage doesn’t make you happy,” says Harvard psychology professor and happiness expert Daniel Gilbert. “Happy marriages make you happy.”

I believe it's important to clear up this misunderstanding, as I've seen that claim repeated to many times around reddit, often to push an anti-marriage, anti-male message.