Do divorcing couples become happier by breaking up?

By Jonathan Gardner, Andrew J. Oswald. Social Science Research Network, 2006

248 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary. Divorce is a leap in the dark. The paper investigates whether people who split up actually become happier. Using the British Household Panel Survey, we can observe an individual's level of psychological well‐being in the years before and after divorce. Our results show that divorcing couples reap psychological gains from the dissolution of their marriages. Men and women benefit equally. The paper also studies the effects of bereavement, of having dependant children and of remarriage. We measure well‐being by using general health questionnaire and life satisfaction scores.

Subfields: Gender Studies, General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/64a8de1a3e69cca393fc7aef39c3414ffb69aa12

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Citations in the corpus

The Life Satisfaction Approach to Environmental Valuation (2010, background): “Finally, life satisfaction predicts both, future marriage (Stutzer and Frey 2006) and future marital break-up (Gardner and Oswald 2006).”
Income and happiness: Evidence, explanations and economic implications (2006, methodology): “Lastly, measures of life satisfaction have also recently been shown to predict future marital break-up (Gardner and Oswald, 2006a).18 Overall, the growing economics of happiness literature is testament to the fact that a growing number of economists believe that self-reported well-being data…”
Financial satisfaction over the life course: The influence of assets and liabilities (2011, unknown): “…have shown to what extent short-term or long-term changes in well-being occur after important life events, including changes in marital status such as marriage (Lucas et al., 2003; Zimmermann and Easterlin, 2006), divorce (Lucas, 2005; Gardner and Oswald, 2006), and widowhood (Lucas et al., 2003).”
Does sport make you happy? An analysis of the well‐being derived from sports participation (2011, background): “The motivation of the economics literature is to measure the utility of individuals (Gardner and Oswald 2006 ; Kahneman and Krueger 2006 ; Shields and Wheatley Price 2005 ).”
Patterns of psychological adaptation to divorce after a long-term marriage (2015, result): “Whereas some studies found men to adapt better and more quickly to the new situation (Simon, 2002), others found just the opposite (Andress & Bröckel, 2007) and still others did not find any gender differences at all (Gardner & Oswald, 2006; Strohschein, McDonough, Monette, & Shao, 2005).”
Relative Income, Happiness and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles (2008, unknown): “Measures of life satisfaction have been shown to predict future marital break-up (Gardner and Oswald, 2006).”
Is it Pleasure or Health from Leisure that We Benefit from Most? An Analysis of Well-Being Alternatives and Implications for Policy (2016, background): “The literature suggests that being married raises well-being compared to being divorced, separated or having suffered bereavement (Gardner and Oswald, 2006), but there are dynamic effects involved, with well-being from bereavement recovering over about an 8 year span (Lucas et al. 2003); and that…”
Life satisfaction dynamics with quarterly life event data (2011, unknown): “, 2004; Clark, 2006), marriage and divorce (Lucas and Clark, 2006; Oswald and Gardner, 2006; Zimmermann and Easterlin, 2006); income (Kuhn et al.”
Happiness in the Air: How Does a Dirty Sky Affect Mental Health and Subjective Well-being? (2017, background): “Our findings on hedonic happiness also contributes to the debate about the Easterlin paradox, that is, the observation that over time happiness does not display a 1 Specifically, our identified effect is about one tenths in size to that of a divorce or being widowed in Britain (Gardner and Oswald 20”
Will GDP Growth Increase Happiness in Developing Countries? (2011, background): “Satisfaction measures have also recently been shown to predict future marital break-up (Gardner and Oswald, 2006, Guven et al., 2010).”