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Love Actually?

Dissecting the Marriage-Happiness Relationship


Donata Bessey July 18, 2012

Yonsei University, School of Government and Business, Department of Economics, 1 Yonseidae-gil, 220-778 Wonju, Republic of Korea, dbessey@yonsei.ac.kr. I thank Simon Janssen, Taejeong Lee, Kimiko Osawa and Ines Pelger as well as session participants at the 2011 annual meeting of the Canadian Economics Association, at the 2012 annual meeting of the Korean Association for Applied Economics and seminar participants at Yonsei University for helpful comments.

Abstract Using theoretical concepts based on identity economics, this paper empirically tests the idea that adherence to social norms to get married can provide an additional utility gain from marriage. Norms to get married should be stronger among more traditionalist individuals, so they should put more emphasis on the mere fact of getting married and put less emphasis on match quality. In line with those theoretical predictions, marital satisfaction increases utility for nontraditionalist individuals, while traditionalists seem to be in marriages with lower match quality. The mere fact of being married is associated with lower happiness when controlling for marital satisfaction for non-traditionalists, but there seems to be an identity-based happiness gain from marriage for traditionalist individuals. These ndings can be interpreted as evidence for identity-based utility eects from marriage. JEL classication: I31, J12 Keywords: Marriage, subjective well-being, identity

Motivation

One of the most pervasive ndings from empirical happiness research is the positive relationship between marital status and happiness: married people are found to be happier than singles, divorce(e)s, separated and widowed individuals in a considerable number of previous studies. See, for example, Diener et al. (1999) for a review of the psychological literature on research in subjective well-being, or Frey and Stutzer (2002) for a review of the economic literature. Most papers provide an explanation of the benets from marriage in terms of specialization of partners, mutual support and companionship, or the provision of services for which there are no or imperfect markets (Kohler et al. 2005). However, there might also be another source of benecial eects from marriage: social norms to marry and the resulting relief once one has complied with the norms and is married. Morgan and Berkowitz King (2001) discuss the importance of marriage as a social norm in the context of fertility decisions. From an economic point of view, this relates to recent research on identity economics (Akerlof and Kranton 2000). In this paper, I test the hypothesis that there are additional benets from marriage because of the existence of social norms using data from the 2006 East Asian Social Survey (EASS), including data from Japan, the Republic of Korea and the Republic of China (Taiwan). Despite important dierences between the countries, traditional values in all East Asian countries are deeply inuenced by Confucian thought (Chang 1997), and its principles are still present in everyday life (Tu 1996). The Con-

fucianist cultures of East Asia place a special emphasis on the family (Lee 1989), with resulting strong prescriptions to marry and continue the family line. This emphasis is an implication of lial piety, one of the ve human relations in Confucian thought. According to Mencius, the most important Confucian philosopher after Confucius himself, it is the worst crime against lial piety to not leave any posterity (Tang 1995). Therefore, marriage as the only means of fathering legitimate posterity is given special prominence in all countries inuenced by Confucian thought. Compared to, for example, European countries, marriage rates are still comparatively high (although declining, most sharply in Japan) and cohabitation is a relatively unknown phenomenon (Jones 2004). This suggests that social norms to marry are still relatively strong in East Asian countries and that there might be the possibility of identity-based utility gains from marriage, especially for traditionalist individuals. In this paper, I empirically test the relationship between traditional values and dierent possible happiness eects of marriage. Assuming that social norms to marry are stronger among more traditionalist individuals, one would expect an additional positive eect of the mere fact of being married for them because they have complied with social norms. However, because traditionalists should put more emphasis on the simple fact of being married and probably put less emphasis on the quality of the match with their spouse, I do not expect a positive eect stemming from marital satisfaction on happiness for them. In line with the theoretical predictions, I nd indeed that marital satisfaction, but not the mere fact of being married, has a positive eect on happiness for non-traditionalists, and traditionalists seem to be 4

more likely to be in marriages with worse match quality as measured by lower marital satisfaction. Finally, I also nd that, controlling for marital satisfaction, the simple fact of being married has a negative eect on happiness for non-traditionalists, while it has a positive albeit statistically insignicant eect on happiness for traditionalists. However, the regressor capturing the fact of being married and the interaction term for being a married traditionalist are highly signicant together. These ndings suggest that there are indeed identity-based utility gains for traditionalists. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Part 2 presents theoretical considerations, part 3 introduces the data set, describes the regressors used in the empirical analysis and provides some interesting descriptive statistics, part 4 outlines the estimation strategy and presents estimation results, and part 5 concludes.

Theoretical Considerations

Akerlof and Kranton (2000) introduced the concept of identity into economic theory, and show how identity, or an individuals sense of self, matters for economic outcomes. The model assumes that identity depends on an individuals assigned social category, how the individuals characteristics match that categorys ideals, and how the individuals and other society members actions correspond to the set of behaviors for the assigned category. Following their terminology, I assume that there are two dierent social categories Ci : traditionalists (type A), and non-traditionalists (type B). Correspondingly, there are two dierent prescriptions or sets of behaviors Pi con5

sidered to be appropriate for members of the categories, with our behavior of interest being the decision to get married. Let Pa denote the prescriptions for the traditionalists, and Pb the prescriptions for the non-traditionalists. Assume further that type A individuals expectations towards others include to comply with the social norm to get married, while type B individuals do not have this expectation. Akerlof and Kranton incorporate identity into the following utility function:

Uj = Uj (aj , aj , Ij )

(1)

In this utility function, aj denotes the vector of ones own actions , aj denotes the vector of other society members actions, and Ij denotes an individuals identity. Our action aj of interest is the decision to get married. For the sake of simplicity, assume that marriage increases utility through two channels: a marriage-derived utility component and an identity-derived utility component. The marriage-derived utility component includes the familiar explanations for the utility-increasing characteristics of marriage, i.e., specialization of partners, mutual support and companionship, or the provision of services for which there are no or imperfect markets (Kohler et al. 2005). Let aj denote this utility component. The identity-derived component aects utility through approval or disapproval from individuals of the same social category (aj ), but also through Ij if an individual acts in accordance with his or her identity. All individuals choose whether to get married or not. Because the prescription to get married should be much stronger among traditionalists, tradi-

tionalists should probably put more emphasis on the mere fact of getting married and put less emphasis on the quality of the match with their spouse, compared to non-traditionalists. This should lead to the following two predictions: rstly, married traditionalists should derive utility from the fact of being married, and secondly, they should, ceteris paribus, derive less utility through the channel of marital satisfaction. Hence, I expect Uj /aj = 0 and Uj /aj , Uj /Ij > 0. On the other hand, non-married traditionalists should derive disutility from the fact of not being married, and I expect Uj /aj = 0 (because they are not married) and Uj /aj , Uj /Ij < 0. For the second category, the non-traditionalists, I expect the following. Nontraditionalists social norms do not include the prescription to marry, so they should only marry if they have found a partner with suciently good match quality. Because of better match quality, they should derive utility from their marriage, but because they do not have the prescription to get married, they should not derive utility from the fact of being married: Uj /aj > 0 and Uj /aj , Uj /Ij = 0. Finally, for non-married non-traditionalists, there should be a dierence between singles or divorce(e)s and cohabiting ones. While the rst two categories should not derive any relationship-related utility, the cohabiting ones should. However, as they do not care about the prescription to marry, they should not derive any disutility from their nonmarried status, leading to the following predictions: Uj /aj > 0 (if they are in a relationship) or Uj /aj = 0 (if they are single) and Uj /aj , Uj /Ij = 0. These theoretical considerations can be summarized in the following table, with the expected signs of the partial derivatives written over the arguments in the identity-augmented utility function. 7

[Insert Table 1 about here] The next section introduces the data set and provides some interesting descriptive statistics.

Data set and descriptive statistics

In this section, I provide a short introduction of the data set that I use for the empirical analysis, as well as some descriptive statistics. Complete summary statistics are provided in Appendix A. For the empirical analysis of the relationship between marriage, identity and happiness, I use the 2006 East Asian Social Survey (EASS). Participating countries include the Peoples Republic of China, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the Republic of China (Taiwan). Because the happiness question was asked with a dierent wording in the PR China, I could use only the observations from the latter three countries.1 After dropping observations with missing values, the data set consists of n = 5442 individuals.

3.1

Core Independent Variables

The three core independent variables and their interactions are used to test the theoretical predictions that marital status should have dierent eects on happiness for non-traditionalists and for traditionalists, and that nontraditionalists and traditionalists should be in marriages with dierent match 8

quality, reected by dierent levels of marital satisfaction.

3.1.1

Marital Status

Respondents marital status is captured by a set of dummy variables that take the value of 1 if the respondent is married, divorced/separated (i.e., living separated and intending to get a divorce) or widowed, respectively, with singles as the baseline category.

3.1.2

Traditional Attitudes

The EASS contains eighteen questions on individuals atttitudes towards marriage in general (e.g. It is all right for a couple to live together without intending to get married, gender roles (e.g., A husbands job is to earn money, a wifes job is to look after the home and family), relationships inside the family (e.g., The authority of father in a family should be respected under any circumstances), and lial piety (e.g., Children must make eorts to do something that would bring honor to their parents) on a scale from 1 to 7 (strongly disagree to strongly agree). All questions can be found in Appendix A. Using these questions, I construct an index to determine which individuals are traditionalist and which individuals are non-traditionalist. Respondents are considered to be traditionalist if they answered with the most extreme category to more than two of the statements, which corresponds to approximately 33% of the total sample.2

3.1.3

Marital Satisfaction

The EASS contains a question on marital satisfaction with the following wording: Considering all things together, how would you describe your marriage? Would you say that you are very satised or dissatised with your marriage? Respondents could answer this question on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being completely dissatised and 5 being completely satised. I use this question as a measure of marital satisfaction that can provide marriage-based utility gains, leading to higher levels of reported happiness.

3.2

Control Variables

Finally, the EASS contains a series of standard background questions, e.g., on respondents employment status, education, living situation, income, and country of residence. I use several of those variables as controls in the happiness regressions. The selection of these control cariables is based on previous reported relations in the literature on happiness research.

3.2.1

Gender

Previous research on gender dierences in happiness levels has shown inconclusive results, but if gender dierences are found, women usually report higher levels of happiness (Diener et al. 1999). In order to control for possible dierences in happiness between the sexes, I included a dummy variable that is coded as 1 if the respondent is female.

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3.2.2

Age

Previous research on happiness across the life span has shown inconclusive results, with some earlier studies suggesting that happiness declines with age (Wilson 1967), others nding a U-shaped relationship with young and old individuals being happier than middle-aged ones (Christoph and Noll 2003, Hayo and Seifert 2003), and nally others suggesting that happiness is constant across the life span (Diener and Suh 1998). In order to control for the possibility that age aects happiness, I included respondents age as a control variable in the regressions.

3.2.3

Self-reported health status

Previous research suggests that self-reported health status is strongly correlated with happiness, with individuals who report better health status being happier as well (Diener et al. 1999), so I included information on self-reported health as a control variable in the regressions. All respondents were asked to rate their health status on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 meaning very good and 5 meaning very bad. I re-coded the variable in order to assign higher values to a better health status to make its interpretation more intuitive. The highest value (5) now corresponds to the best self-reported health category, i.e. very good.

3.2.4

Education

Previous research on the relationship between an individuals level of formal education and happiness has shown inconclusive results (see, for example,

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Haller and Hadler 2006). In order to control for possible dierences in happiness among individuals with dierent levels of formal education, I included the natural logarithm of the number of years of education that respondents have received.

3.2.5

Number of family members

Household size might aect the respondents happiness in a positive way because of the existence of close and supportive relationships with family members (see, for example, Stutzer 2004). However, one could also imagine the opposite case where a large family size aects respondents happiness in a negative way because of stressful relationships with family members, more household chores (especially if the respondent alone is responsible for them) or because of lack of nancial resources in larger households. In order to control for the possibility that the number of family members living with the respondent aects his or her happiness, I included information on the number of household members as a control variable.

3.2.6

Country of residence

As the data set consists of respondents in three dierent countries, I include a control variable for their country of residence. The baseline category is Japan, and I included two dummy variables that take the value of 1 if the respondent lives in Korea or in Taiwan, respectively.

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3.2.7

Employment Status

Previous research suggests that paid employment has a positive eect on individuals happiness (see, for instance, Clark and Oswald 1994 or Hayo and Seifert 2003). In order to control for that fact, I included a control variable on individuals employment status. Employment status is coded as a dummy variable that takes the value of 1 if the respondent said she or he was unemployed, and the value of 0 otherwise (including working full-time, working part-time, being self-employed or a helping family member, being in school, vocational, or university training, being retired, being permanently disabled, being a homemaker and not being in the labor force).

3.2.8

Number of children

Previous research suggests that the presence of children has an impact on individuals happiness (see, for example Kohler et al. 2005 or Vanassche et al. (forthcoming)). In order to control for the possible inuence of the presence of ospring on happiness, I included information on the number of the respondents children as a control variable.

3.2.9

Household income

Previous research suggests that there are small but signicant positive correlations between personal income and happiness (Diener et al. 1999). In order to control for the respondents general nancial situation, I included a set of 9 dummy variables that take the value of 1 if the respondent belongs to the second up to the tenth decile of the respective countrys income distribution

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respectively, with the rst (lowest) income decile being the baseline category.

3.3

Descriptive Statistics

In the following, I am going to present some descriptive statistics on the relationship between marital status and happiness and on the dierences between traditionalists and non-traditionalists. [Insert Table 2 about here] The rst table displays the marital status of respondents and mean values for their response to the question All things considered, how satised are you with your life as a whole these days?, with 1 being very dissatised and 5 being very satised. As in previous research, married individuals report the highest levels of happiness. In addition, two interesting facts stand out. Firstly, widowed individuals report higher levels of happiness than divorced or separated individuals (who plan to get a divorce, but have not obtained it yet). While both widowed and divorced or separated individuals have lost their partner, they dier in one key aspect: widowed individuals had complied with social norms to get married in the past, but separated or divorced ones have broken social norms. This non-compliance with social norms can lead to lower utility levels for the divorced individuals. Secondly, cohabiting individuals report by far the lowest levels of happiness. While they should also benet from the existence of a partner much like married individuals do, they are also potentially breaking social norms.3 For example, in the EASS 2006, only about 25% of individuals strongly, fairly or somewhat agree that it is okay for a couple to live together without intending to get married. 14

[Insert Table 3 about here] This table displays dierences between traditional and non-traditional individuals in terms of marital status and marital satisfaction. A higher number of traditionalist individuals is married, and traditionalist individuals report slightly higher levels of marital satisfaction than non-traditionalists. Finally, traditionalists are on average about 4 years older and have about 2 years less education than non-traditionalists. All dierences are statistically signicant at the 1% level. The next section presents the estimation strategy and estimation results.

Estimation strategy and results

Ferrer i Carbonell and Frijters (2004) show that assuming cardinality or ordinality matters only little for results in happiness research. Because of the diculties associated with the interpretation of interaction terms in nonlinear models (Ai and Norton 2003), I estimated simple ordinary least squares (OLS) models instead of ordered probit or logits. In order to test the theoretical predictions about possible identity-based utility gains, I augment a standard OLS happiness regression by several dummy variables and interaction terms. In addition to dummy variables for marital status (married, divorced, widowed), I entered a dummy variable for being a traditionalist, and a variable measuring individuals self-rated marital satisfaction (on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being very satised). Finally, I also entered interaction terms between marital status and having traditional values as well as between marital satisfaction and traditional values in order to 15

test whether the eects of the mere fact of being married and marital satisfaction are indeed dierent for traditionalists and non-traditionalists. Similarly, I also entered interaction terms for the marital status of being divorced and being widowed with traditional values. Marital satisfaction serves as a measure for marriage-based utility gains (aj in equation (1)), while marital status serves as a measure for identity-based utility gains and utility gains caused by other individuals actions, such as approval or disapproval from them (Ij and aj in equation (1)). Finally, the control vector Xi contains standard controls in happiness research for an individuals gender, age, self-rated health status, the log of education years, household size, number of children, country of residence, employment status, and the decile in the income distribution of the respective country which the respondent belongs to. This leads to the following estimation equation.

happinessi = 1 + 2 maritalstatus i + 3 traditionali + 4 maritalsatisf action + 5 maritalstatus i traditionali + 6 maritalsatisf actioni traditionali + 7 Xi +
i

The following table displays results from a standard OLS regression. Robust standard errors are given in parentheses, ***, **, and * denote signicance levels of 1%, 5%, and 10%, respectively. Full regression results can be found in Appendix B, as well as additional robustness checks using only subsamples (men vs. women and separate regressions for the three countries included in 16

the sample). [Insert Table 4 about here] The rst interesting result is that the simple fact of being married decreases happiness for non-traditionalists, while marital satisfaction increases happiness for them. This provides empirical evidence for the existence of benets from marriage in terms of specialization of partners, mutual support and companionship, or the provision of services for which there are no or imperfect markets (Kohler et al. 2005). It also provides evidence for the hypothesis that non-traditionalists only marry if they nd a partner with whom the match quality is suciently good, but not for the mere fact of being married. The next interesting nding is that very traditional individuals report higher levels of happiness. A tentative explanation might be that traditionalists values are associated with less questioning about the meaning of life and, consequently, higher levels of reported satisfaction. As predicted by the theoretical considerations, the simple fact of being married increases utility for traditionalists, but the eect is not statistically signicant. A Wald test for the joint signicance of the two variables married and married traditional, however, shows that they are highly signicant together (F (2, 5413) = 125.31, prob > F = 0.0000). This nding suggests that there is indeed an additional identity-based utility gain from the fact of being married for traditionalist individuals. As predicted by the theoretical considerations, more traditional individuals seem to be less satised with their marriages, as shown by the negative eect of the interaction term traditionalmaritalsatisf action. The reason for this 17

might be the lower match quality of traditionalists marriages, compared to non-traditionalists. For widowed and divorced individuals, the theoretical predictions are not conrmed by my estimations. No statistically signicant eects are found for the eect of widowhood on happiness. For divorced individuals, I nd that non-traditional divorce(e)s are less happy than singles. This suggests that even though they probably do not to care about social norms, nontraditionalists suer from divorce-related stress. In addition, I carried out robustness checks (see Table 7 in Appendix B) using various subsamples and running regressions for men, for women and for each of the three countries separately. The results for marital satisfaction and the simple fact of being married remain unchanged in all ve estimations. As in the regression for the whole sample, the interaction term married traditional is positive albeit insignicant, but again, Wald tests show that the two variables married and married traditional are always highly signicant together. This provides further evidence for identity-based happiness gains from the simple fact of being married for traditionalist individuals. Finally, the interaction term traditional maritalsatisf action is still negative but becomes insignicant in all robustness checks. The control variables show some interesting results as well. Women are found to be happier than men in the three East Asian countries that I analyzed. This goes in line with previous research ndings: if gender dierences are found, then usually women are found to be happier than men (see, for example, Diener et al. 1999). Next, older individuals are found to be happier, which is not a standard result in the previous literature. The higher happi18

ness levels of older individuals might be explained by the high levels of stress that most individuals in East Asian countries experience during their school and work years (see, for example, Lee and Larson 1999 for the case of Korean students, Park et al. 2008 for the high levels of job stress and depression among Korean employees, and Spector et al. 2001 for the higher psychological strains of Japanese and Taiwanese employees, compared to American employees) and resulting higher levels of happiness once examination hell and stressful work life are over. Third, as reported in the previous literature, individuals in better health status are also happier, and unemployed individuals are less happy than those working full- or part-time, being in school, being a homemaker, or retired. I do not nd any signicant relationship between household size or the number of ones own children and respondents happiness. More educated women are happier, but there is no such eect for male respondents in the sample. Fourth, respondents in Korea are found to be signicantly less happy than those in Japan, and respondents in Taiwan are found to be signicantly happier than those in Japan. Ohayon and Hong (2006) present results on the prevalence of major depressive disorder in Korean adults and nd that about 20% of respondents in their sample suer from depression symptoms. They also resport that only few respondents seek help for their symptoms, and very few received appropriate treatment for their condition. This might be part of the reason why Korean respondents are signicantly less happy than those in the other two countries. Fifth, I nd positive eects of income on happiness starting from the upper half of the income distribution (i.e., the sixth decile of the income distribution 19

and above). Again, this is in line with previous research reporting positive correlations between income and happiness (see, for example, Diener et al. 1999).

Conclusion

This paper presented an empirical test of the prediction that marriage provides utility not only through marital satisfaction, but also through identitybased utility gains for traditionalist individuals in East Asian countries. The reason are probable stronger prescriptions to get married among more traditionalist individuals, and hence the possibility of identity-based utility gains of marriage for traditionalists. At the same time, traditionalists should, on average, be less satised with their marriage because they should put more emphasis on the fact of being married and less emphasis on the quality of the match with their spouse. The empirical ndings show indeed that marital satisfaction increases happiness for non-traditionalists, while traditionalists are signicantly less satised with their marriage. This suggests that they are in marriages with worse match quality, compared to non-traditionalists. I nd a positive eect of the mere fact of being married for traditionalists. Although it is not statistically signicant, the joint signicance of the two variables measuring an individuals traditional attitudes and an interaction term between marital status and traditional attitudes could not be rejected in a Wald test. This suggests that there are indeed identity-based utility gains from marriage for traditionalist individuals in East Asian countries. 20

A last interesting result is the fact that when controlling for marital satisfaction, the mere fact of being married decreases happiness in a statistically signicant way. This suggests that marital satisfaction (or maybe love, actually), is responsible for the happiness eects of marriage for nontraditionalists. However, there are also several limitations to this study. The rst one concerns the lack of information in the dataset used for my empirical analysis. It is, for example, likely that both overall satisfaction with life or happiness and marital satisfaction are driven by personality traits, but there is no information on personality traits in the EASS, as in most other social surveys and comparable datasets. The positive relationship between marital satisfaction and happiness should therefore be seen as a correlation and not as a causal eect. The second one follows from the fact that the EASS is a cross-sectional dataset. It could for example be that people who are more satised with life in general are more likely to get married and also more satised with their marriage. Longitudinal datasets would oer an opportunity to overcome this limitation following from a selection process into marriage. Finally, a separate analysis of cohabiting couples could provide more insights into the possible dierences between cohabitation and marriage and their eects on happiness, but the very low number of cohabiting couples in the sample made an analysis of this question impossible.

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Notes
In China, respondents were asked All things considered, how happy are you with your life as a whole these days?, and in the other three countries, All things considered, how satised are you with your life as a whole these days?. 2 Results do not change if I use the index instead of this dummy, but as interpretation is more intuitive for the dummy variable, I decided to use the dummy. 3 However, as the number of cohabiting individuals in the sample is very low, I am not going to analyze them in more detail in the estimations.
1

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References
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Journal of Population/Revue europeenne de Demographie, 17(1), 3-20. Ohayon, M. M., & Hong, S.-C. (2006). Prevalence of major depressive disorder in the general population of South Korea. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 40 (1), 30 - 36. Park, S.-G., Min, K.-B., Chang, S.-J., Kim, H.-C., & Min, J.-Y. (2009). Job stress and depressive symptoms among Korean employees: the eects of culture on work. International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, 82 , 397-405. Spector, P. E., Cooper, C. L., Sanchez, J. I., ODriscoll, M., Sparks, K., Bernin, P., . . . Yu, S. (2001). Do national levels of individualism and internal locus of control relate to well-being: an ecological level international study. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 22 (8), 815 832. Stutzer, A. (1994). The role of income aspirations in individual happiness. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 54(1), 89 - 109. Tang, Z. (1995). Confucianism, Chinese culture, and reproductive behavior. Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 16 (3), 269-284. Tu, W.-M. (1996). Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity: Moral Education and Economic Culture in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vanassche, S., Swicegood, G., & Matthijs, K. (in press). Marriage and children as a key to happiness? Cross-national dierences in the eects of marital status and children on well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies. Wilson, W. (1967). Correlates of avowed happiness. Psychological Bulletin, 22 , 520-537.

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Tables
Table 1: Categories and choices
Complier: married/widowed
0 + +

Non-Complier: single/divorced/cohabiting
0 +,0

Ca (Traditionalist) Cb (Non-traditionalist)

U ( aj , aj , Ij )
+ 0 0

U ( aj , aj , Ij )
0 0

U ( aj , aj , Ij )

U ( aj , aj , Ij )

Table 2: Marital status and happiness levels Percent married, living as married 70.07% widowed 8.29% divorced 4.17% separated, but married 0.39% single, never married 17.48% cohabiting 0.13% Total 5442 Happiness 3.5202 3.4035 3.1165 3.0476 3.3565 2.7143

Table 3: Characteristics of traditionalists and non-traditionalists Traditionalist Non-Traditionalist Two-sample t-test statistics Married 72.86% 68.74% 3.1542 Marital satisfaction 2.87 2.54 5.8304 Age 51.62 47.46 8.8765 Years of education 10.20 12.29 16.8042 n 1754 3688 df = 5440

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Table 4: Marriage, traditional values, and happiness: OLS regression results Happiness Marital satisfaction 0.399*** [0.021] 1 = married -1.353*** [0.094] 1 = very traditional 0.169** [0.074] traditional * married 0.121 [0.168] traditional * marital satisfaction -0.063* [0.037] 1 = widowed -0.027 [0.081] traditional * widowed 0.145 [0.118] 1 = divorced -0.218*** [0.083] traditional * divorced -0.015 [0.168] Observations 5442 R-squared 0.27

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7
7.1

Appendix A
Complete summary statistics
Table 5: Complete summary statistics
Variable Happiness Marital satisfaction Married Very traditional Widowed Divorced Female Age Health status Log of education years Household size Korea Taiwan Unemployed Number of children Second income decile Third income decile Fourth income decile Fifth income decile Sixth income decile Seventh income decile Eighth income decile Ninth income decile Tenth income decile Obs 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 5442 Mean 3.4683 2.6477 0.7007 0.3223 0.0829 0.0417 0.5382 48.8014 3.5932 2.3487 3.8307 0.2585 0.3598 0.0447 1.9131 0.1130 0.1152 0.0362 0.0871 0.0742 0.0752 0.0882 0.0741 0.0707 Std. Dev. 0.9534 1.9104 0.4580 0.4674 0.2757 0.2000 0.4986 16.2780 1.0600 0.5784 1.7150 0.4379 0.4800 0.2066 1.4616 0.3166 0.3193 0.1868 0.2820 0.2622 0.2637 0.2836 0.2619 0.2564 Min 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 18 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Max 5 5 1 1 1 1 1 92 5 3.1355 16 1 1 1 12 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

7.2

Questions used for constructing the Traditional Values Index

If you were to have only one child, would you prefer a boy or a girl? (boy: traditional) Who do you think is most responsible for taking care of old parents? (eldest son: traditional) To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements? Husband should be older than wife (completely agree: traditional) It is not necessary to have children in marriage (completely disagree: traditional) Married men are generally happier than unmarried men (completely agree: traditional)

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Married women are generally happier than unmarried women (completely agree: traditional) It is all right for a couple to live together without intending to get married (completely disagree: traditional) People who want to divorce must wait until children are grown up (completely agree: traditional) Divorce is usually the best solution when a couple cant seem to work out their marriage (completely disagree: traditional) It is more important for a wife to help her husbands career than to pursue her own career (completely agree: traditional) A husbands job is to earn money; a wifes job is to look after the home and family (completely agree: traditional) Men ought to do a larger share of household work than they do now (completely disagree: traditional) During economic recession, it is all right for women to be laid-o prior to men (completely agree: traditional) The authority of father in a family should be respected under any circumstances (completely agree: traditional) Children must make eorts to do something that would bring honor to their parents (completely agree: traditional) The eldest son should inherit a larger share of the property (completely agree: traditional) A child who has taken good care of parents should inherit a larger share of the property (completely agree: traditional) To continue the family line, one must have at least one son (completely agree: traditional) If husbands family and wifes family need help at the same time, a married woman should help husbands family rst (completely agree: traditional) One must put familial well-being and interest before ones own (completely agree: traditional)

28

Appendix B
Table 6: Marriage, traditional values, and happiness: Full results
Marital satisfaction 1 = married 1 = very traditional traditional * married traditional * marital satisfaction 1 = widowed traditional * widowed 1 = divorced traditional * divorced 1 = female age health log of education years number of family members 1 = Korea 1 = Taiwan 1 = unemployed Number of kids Second income decile Third income decile Fourth income decile Fifth income decile Sixth income decile Seventh income decile Eighth income decile Ninth income decile Tenth income decile Constant Observations R-squared Happiness 0.399*** [0.021] -1.353*** [0.094] 0.169** [0.074] 0.121 [0.168] -0.063* [0.037] -0.027 [0.081] 0.145 [0.118] -0.218*** [0.083] -0.015 [0.168] 0.211*** [0.023] 0.004*** [0.001] 0.214*** [0.013] 0.034 [0.028] -0.006 [0.008] -0.299*** [0.033] 0.166*** [0.031] -0.152** [0.060] -0.004 [0.013] -0.002 [0.044] -0.023 [0.044] 0.049 [0.062] 0.069 [0.045] 0.132*** [0.046] 0.085* [0.046] 0.191*** [0.043] 0.254*** [0.047] 0.326*** [0.047] 1.922*** [0.122] 5442 0.27

Table 7: Robustness checks: subsamples


Marital satisfaction 1 = married 1 = very traditional traditional * married traditional * marital satisfaction 1 = widowed traditional * widowed 1 = divorced traditional * divorced age health log of educ. years number of family members 1 = Korea 1 = Taiwan 1 = unemployed Number of kids Second income decile Third income decile Fourth income decile Fifth income decile Sixth income decile Seventh income decile Eighth income decile Ninth income decile Tenth income decile Constant Observations R-squared Wald test Prob > F Women 0.412*** [0.027] -1.393*** [0.118] 0.162 [0.116] 0.005 [0.223] -0.024 [0.048] -0.046 [0.096] 0.162 [0.153] -0.158 [0.109] 0.022 [0.251] 0.006*** [0.001] 0.211*** [0.016] 0.069* [0.036] 0.003 [0.011] -0.252*** [0.044] 0.228*** [0.041] -0.08 [0.079] -0.003 [0.016] 0.023 [0.060] 0.063 [0.057] 0.132 [0.080] 0.102* [0.057] 0.188*** [0.057] 0.079 [0.060] 0.216*** [0.057] 0.265*** [0.060] 0.374*** [0.063] 2.080*** [0.149] 2929 0.31 F(2,2485) = 41.90 0.0000 Men 0.376*** [0.035] -1.267*** [0.154] 0.176* [0.098] 0.177 [0.264] -0.084 [0.059] 0.134 [0.171] 0.079 [0.247] -0.293** [0.123] -0.032 [0.228] 0.003* [0.002] 0.223*** [0.020] -0.028 [0.046] -0.015 [0.012] -0.344*** [0.052] 0.088* [0.047] -0.247*** [0.092] 0 [0.020] -0.057 [0.065] -0.141** [0.068] -0.058 [0.093] 0.013 [0.072] 0.041 [0.074] 0.083 [0.073] 0.142** [0.065] 0.228*** [0.074] 0.257*** [0.073] 2.463*** [0.180] 2512 0.23 F(2,2902) = 85.17 0.0000 Japan 0.384*** [0.027] -1.198*** [0.124] 0.138 [0.180] 0.091 [0.406] -0.011 [0.087] 0.17 [0.107] 0.128 [0.273] -0.200* [0.118] 0.381 [0.484] 0.006*** [0.001] 0.311*** [0.020] -0.117 [0.097] 0.018 [0.014] Korea 0.401*** [0.040] -1.351*** [0.174] -0.013 [0.136] 0.408 [0.262] -0.095 [0.060] 0.058 [0.216] 0.278 [0.255] -0.252 [0.244] 0.041 [0.347] -0.003 [0.003] 0.116*** [0.024] 0.045 [0.059] -0.049** [0.023] Taiwan 0.356*** [0.051] -1.246*** [0.215] 0.178* [0.104] 0.056 [0.314] -0.042 [0.072] -0.194 [0.163] 0.391** [0.191] -0.054 [0.131] -0.191 [0.242] 0 [0.002] 0.188*** [0.021] -0.027 [0.037] -0.015 [0.012]

-0.429*** [0.135] -0.027 [0.021] 0.006 [0.069] -0.045 [0.066] 0 [0.000] 0.001 [0.063] 0.134** [0.059] 0.037 [0.067] 0.055 [0.057] 0.173** [0.083] 0.279*** [0.077] 2.128*** [0.297] 2076 0.3 F(2,2052) = 50.32 0.0000

-0.161 [0.112] 0.041 [0.028] 0.03 [0.115] 0.057 [0.109] 0.315** [0.151] 0.322*** [0.120] 0.216* [0.122] 0.326*** [0.116] 0.412*** [0.144] 0.458*** [0.115] 0.545*** [0.126] 2.545*** [0.250] 1407 0.22 F(2,1382) = 35.33 0.0000

-0.061 [0.080] 0.026 [0.020] 0.006 [0.071] 0.042 [0.084] 0.04 [0.081] 0.036 [0.085] 0.189** [0.086] 0.008 [0.094] 0.294*** [0.079] 0.253*** [0.085] 0.342*** [0.079] 2.843*** [0.168] 1958 0.18 F(2,1933) = 27.36 0.0000

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