According to a new study from Gallup Poll, adults who are married report being far happier than those in any other relationship. “Any way you analyze those data, we see a fairly large and notable advantage to being married in terms of how people evaluate their life,” said poll author Jonathan Rothwell, principal economist at Gallup. The survey took place from 2009 to 2023 where more than 2.5 million adults in the United States were asked how they would rate their current life based on happiness - zero being the worst possible and 10 being that highest. The, the researchers asked the respondents what they anticipated their happiness level to be like in five years. According to the survey, a person had to rank their current life as a seven or higher and their anticipated future ranking as an eight or higher to be considered thriving. The survey found that married people consistently reported their happiness levels higher than their unmarried counterparts. They ranged from 12 percent to 24 percent higher depending on the year. The survey reported that the gap was there even when researchers adjusted the information for factors such as age, race, ethnicity, gender and education. “Things like race and age and gender and education matter. But marriage seems to matter more than those things when it comes to something like this measure of kind of living your best life,” said Bradford Wilcox, professor of sociology and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Wilcox reviewed and edited the Gallup Poll research. “We’re social animals. And as Aristotle said, we are hardwired to connect.”

Many people may ask, do I need to get married to be happier? According to Rothwell, it's hard to say based on the data. “There’s also famously, for men anyway, a premium associated with being married in terms of earning higher income,” Rothwell said. “There’s lots of debate in the literature about whether that’s because more successful, charming, intelligent men who have attributes that would lead them to earn more in the labor market are more likely to get married.” Although, according to Dr. Monica O’Neal, a Boston psychologist, being in an unhappy marriage will likely not leave you feeling better in live overall. “I still believe that those who have unhappy marriages, are probably less happy than those who are single,” she said. "Whether married or dating, you can optimize your chances for a happy relationship by communicating well on what your commitment to one another entails." Rothwell concluded by saying, “I don’t think we’re ever going to get to a point in social science where we can say whether or not and with any precision whether marriage causes happiness.”