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The Life Satisfaction Advantage of Being Married and Gender Specialization
Author(s) -
Mikucka Małgorzata
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of marriage and family
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.578
H-Index - 159
eISSN - 1741-3737
pISSN - 0022-2445
DOI - 10.1111/jomf.12290
Subject(s) - life satisfaction , psychology , marital status , survey data collection , developing country , demography , demographic economics , geography , population , social psychology , sociology , economics , economic growth , statistics , mathematics
This investigation examined whether the life satisfaction advantage of married over unmarried people decreased over the past 3 decades and whether the changes in contextual gender specialization explained this trend. Contextual gender specialization was defined as a country‐year‐specific share of married women who fully specialize in household work. The author used representative data from the World Values Survey–European Values Study integrated data set for 87 countries ( N = 292,525) covering a period of 29 years (1981–2009). The results showed that the life satisfaction advantage of being married decreased over time among men but not among women. Furthermore, the decline of contextual gender specialization correlated with this trend in developed but not in developing countries. In developed countries the life satisfaction of unmarried people increased as the contextual gender specialization declined, whereas the life satisfaction of married people was not affected.