Inspired by this guy’s post (women feeling depressed vs marital status), I turned to European Social Survey (ESS) to have a look on the survey which ask similar (but not the same) questions like:
a) “how happy are you”
b) “life satisfaction”
The result is then tabulated based by gender and marital status. Males and females from the marital status such as: married, divorced, separated, widowed and never married (total: 41909 subjects) answer on the question “how happy are you?” and “life satisfaction as a whole”. Then the responsdent gave the answer with a scale ran from 1 to 11, 1 being extremely unhappy/dissatisfied and 11 being extremely happy/satisfied. Below here show the mean score of the answer, by marital status and gender:
a) How happy are you?
| Marital Status |
Male |
Female |
Happiness comparison by marital status (both gender):
married > never married > divorced > widowed > separated.
Also note that female consistently has positive outlook than male except from the group of divorced and widowed.
b) Life satisfaction as a whole
| Marital Status |
Male |
Female |
Life satisfaction comparison by marital status (both gender):
married > never married > divorced > separated > widowed.
As for gender difference, female from the group of married, never married and divorced has higher life satisfaction score compared to male.
Source: The European Social Survey (ESS)
