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The Contribution of Marital Happiness to Global Happiness Author(s): Norval D. Glenn and Charles N. Weaver Source: Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Feb., 1981), pp. 161-168 Published by: National Council on Family Relations Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/351426 . Accessed: 06/12/2014 16:21 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . National Council on Family Relations is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Marriage and Family. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 6 Dec 2014 16:21:38 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Contribution of Marital Happiness to Global Happiness

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The Contribution of Marital Happiness to Global HappinessAuthor(s): Norval D. Glenn and Charles N. WeaverSource: Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Feb., 1981), pp. 161-168Published by: National Council on Family RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/351426 .

Accessed: 06/12/2014 16:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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The Contribution of Marital Happiness to Global Happiness*

NORVAL D. GLENN** University of Texas

CHARLES N. WEAVER St. Mary's University

Data from six U.S. national surveys are used to compare the estimated contribu- tions to global happiness of marital happiness and satisfaction with each of seven aspects of life, ranging from work to friendships. Separate estimates are provided for white men, white women, black men, and black women. Except for black men, the estimated contribution of marital happiness is far greater than the estimated contribution of any of the kinds of satisfaction, including satisfaction with work. These findings, considered in conjunction with other evidence, in- dicate that Americans depend very heavily on their marriages for their psycho- logical well-being. Some implications of the findings are discussed.

Practically no one is likely to disagree with the thesis that, for most married people in modern societies, the quality of their marriages has a strong effect on their happiness and satisfaction with life. How- ever, agreement does not exist on how important the quality of marriage is relative to the quality of other activities and aspects of life. For instance, many of the statements made to justify job satisfaction research would lead one to believe that for adult males the quality of work life is usually the most important determinant of overall psycholog- ical well-being. Indeed, most working men spend more waking hours on the job than with their wives, and one might guess that

men are more likely to derive self-esteem, a sense of meaning in life, and other positive feelings from their work than from their relationships with their wives--even when the latter are generally satisfactory.

Folklore would suggest that the quality of marriage should have a greater impact on the happiness of women than on that of men. However, it is not self-evident that marital quality is the major determinant of women's general well-being. It may be that other aspects of women's lives (such as their relationships with their children and other family members, their leisure time activities, and their perceptions of their health) are even stronger determinants. One might suspect that persons with poor marriages can often turn to other relationships and other aspects of their lives to gain the gratifications they do not get from marriage.

Knowledge of the effectiveness of marital quality as a determinant of global well-being, relative to the effectiveness of the quality of other aspects of life as determinants, is important for several reasons. Obviously, it is important as a basis for public policy decisions concerning the allocation of

*The data reported in this paper are from the 1973 through 1978 General Social Surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center with grants from the National Science Foundation. The authors are solely responsible for the tabulations, analyses, and interpreta- tions presented here.

**Department of Sociology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712.

***School of Business and Administration, St. Mary's University, San Antonio, Texas 78284.

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resource for family-life research and educa- tion and for social services and intervention strategies aimed at improving marriages. It is also important for individuals (especially younger ones) as they allocate their personal resources to strive for satisfaction in the dif- ferent "life domains." Finally, it is important to social scientists who strive to understand marriage in modern societies and the changes occurring in that institution. For instance, if people in modern societies are highly depen- dent upon their marriages for their happiness, that very dependence may account to a large extent for the fragility and vulnerability of marriage relationships.

While it appears that there has been no research conducted nor data reported which explicitly seek to answer the question we have posed, two recent large-scale studies of psychological well-being in the United States have generated evidence relevant to the question. For instance, Campbell et al. (1976), in their ambitious study of the "quality of American life," regressed re- sponses to questions concerning satisfaction with 12 "domains of life" on responses to a question about general life satisfaction. The largest regression coefficient (zero-order) was for satisfaction with family life (.408), and the second largest was for satisfaction with marriage (.364). Financial situation ranked- third (.333), housing fourth (.303), and job a rather distant fifth (.274). Reported satisfac- tion with such seemingly important domains as health (.219), friendships (.256), and nonwork activities (.213) bore relatively weak relationships to reported life satisfaction. The respondents were also asked to rank the domains according to their importance to life satisfaction-a procedure which resulted in a somewhat different ranking than did the regression analysis. For instance, health ranked first, rather then eighth, and financial situation dropped from third to eleventh. However, marriage ranked second and family life third-both still well above seventh ranked jobs.

Andrews and Withey (1976) also reported relevant data, but they are not as easily digested and summarized as those reported by Campbell et al. (1976). The former authors related measures of feelings about more than 20 aspects of life to several measures of global well-being. The results

differed according to which technique of analysis was used (regression or multiple- classification analysis), which "concern mea- sures" were included among the predictor variables, and which measure of global well-being was the dependent variable. However, when evaluation of marriage was included as a concern measure, it always ranked high in its partial association with the measure of global well-being. For instance, in its relationship to a measure of global well-being labelled "Life 3," marriage was a close second to "self-efficacy, adjustment, etc." (Andrews and Withey, 1976:156-157). When evaluation of family life was included as a concern measure, it also ranked consistently high, never failing to have a stronger partial relationship to the measure of global well-being than did evaluation of spare-time activities, health, friendships, and the job.

The data from these studies are very strong evidence that the quality of marriage is of crucial importance to the psychological well-being of married Americans. However, they leave some important questions unan- swered. For instance, they cannot reveal any differences in the relationship of quality of marriage to global well-being between men and women or between blacks and whites. The folklore and commonsense considera- tions lead one to expect that the quality of marriage is more important to women than to men, and the findings of at least one study (Glenn, 1975) suggest that is the case. Similarly, we hypothesize that satisfaction with work bears a stronger relationship to global well-being among men than among women. We had no a priori reasons for expecting specific black-white differences in the relationships, but previous research on attitudes, feelings, and family characteristics has so often found interactions with race that it is always advisable to look for such interaction. 1

METHODS The research reported here is an anlysis of

data from the 1972-1978 cumulative file of the General Social Surveys. These surveys,

'I For instance, Glenn and Gotard (1977) found that the divorce rate varied inversely with frequency of church attendance among white Protestants and Catholics, but not among black Protestants.

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designed by James A. Davis and conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, asked a variety of questions in face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of about 1,500 American adults each March from 1972 through 1978.2 On the 1973 sur- vey, and on each subsequent one, the respon- dents were asked to rate their global happi- ness on a 3-point scale (very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy). They also were asked to rate their marital happiness on the same scale (if married) and to rate their satis- faction with each of seven aspects of their lives on either a 3-point scale (financial situa- tion), a 4-point scale (work), or a 7-point scale (community, family life, nonworking activities, friendships, and health and physical condition). The exact wording of the questions is given in the appendix.

In the present study, multiple regression analysis has been used to estimate the contribution of marital happiness and of each of the kinds of satisfaction to global happiness. All of the independent variables have been placed in the regression equation simultaneously and the ranked categories of happiness and satisfaction have been treated as though all pairs of adjacent categories are separated by equal intervals. An estimate of the net effect (a beta, or standardized partial regression coefficient) of each independent variable in each sex-race subpopulation is reported in Table 1.3 For women, separate estimates are reported for all married persons and for those working full time.

Since the independent variables for the regression analysis are intercorrelated, some

of the estimates of their effects are somewhat unstable (Blalock, 1963). However, the problem of multicollinearity is not severe, the highest correlation among the independent variables being between satisfaction with family life and satisfaction with friendships among white men (.505). The corresponding correlations are among the highest in all of the subsamples, as are the correlations between each of these two variables and satisfaction with nonworking activities, most of the coefficients being near .4. Surprisingly, the correlations between marital happiness and satisfaction with family life are not so consistently strong, ranging from .384 among black women working full time to only .191 among black men. The other correlations with marital happiness and all of the correlations with job satisfaction are low- most of them below .1-and thus the estimates of the effects of those crucial variables should be rather stable.

FINDINGS For all black married women and for all

subpopulations of whites, the findings are consistent with those of previous research: Marital happiness bears a stronger zero-order relationship and a stronger partial relation- ship to global happiness than do any of the other dimensions of well-being (Table 1). Only for blacks working full time are the findings other than would be expected, and only in the case of black males does marital happiness fail to outrank work satisfaction as a positive predictor of global happiness.

In view of the small size of the black subsamples, we cannot be confident that sampling error does not account for the failure of the data on black full time workers to agree with the other data. When the corresponding unstandardized partial regres- sion coefficients for whites and blacks are compared, most of the differences fall short of statistical significance. An exception is the regression of global happiness on marital happiness for men, which is significantly greater for whites than for blacks (p <.02 on a two-tailed test).4 It appears, therefore, that

2The 1972, 1973, and 1974 surveys used "modified probability" samples, the 1977 and 1978 surveys used full probability samples, and the 1975 and 1976 samples were mixed, being half modified probability and half full probability. For the distinction between modified and full probability sampling, see Glenn (1977).

3In more technical terms, we estimated a single- equation structural equation model in which each of the specific dimensions of psychological well-being was assumed to affect global happiness, but in which global happiness was assumed not to affect the specific dimensions. Such a recursive model may not be entirely realistic, since there may be some causal feedback from global happiness to the specific dimensions. However, the model serves its purpose well so long as the causation is predominantly in the direction assumed and so long as about the same proportion of each estimated effect (beta) reflects causal feedback.

4It is also important, for reasons pointed out below, that the estimated contribution of marital happiness to global happiness is significantly greater for all married black women that for black men (p <.02 on a two-tailed test).

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TABLE 1. RELATIONSHIP OF SPECIFIC DIMENSIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING TO REPORTED GLOBAL HAPPINESS

Married Persons Working Full Time All Married Women

Men Women Whites Blacks

Whites Blacks Whites Blacks

r beta r beta r beta r beta r beta r beta

Marital Happiness .365 .292 .224 .133 .527 .413 .183 .180 .427 .301 .437 .386 Satisfaction with Work .143 .073 .289 .188 .163 .094 -.128 -.164 - - - - Financial Situation .135 .075 .140 .038 .201 .093 .016 -.002 .247 .141 .061 .018 Community .176 .059 .371 .237 .235 .076 .097 .086 .260 .090 .202 .085 Nonworking Activities .177 .046 .163 .037 .274 .094 .131 .101 .244 .057 .225 .099 Family Life .246 .060 .148 -.025 .393 .132 .166 .019 .386 .151 .251 -.041 Friendships .220 .031 .227 .105 .292 .007 .134 .059 .296 .055 .260 .107 Health .230 .126 .074 .012 .304 .116 .194 .170 .307 .140 .247 .132

Adjusted R2 .190 .164 .379 .031 .316 .234 (N) (1,872) (167) (820) (89) (2,910) (248)

Source. Computed from the cumulative 1973-1978 data file of the General Social Surveys (James A. Davis, prin- cipal investigator).

white men rely more on their marriages for their personal happiness than do black men. This finding may help to provide insight into the nature of several observed black-white differences in marriage relationships in the United States.

We hypothesized that marital happiness would bear a stronger relationship to global happiness among women than among men and that satisfaction with work would bear a stronger relationship to global happiness among men than among women. The direction of all but one of the male-female differences is consistent with the hypotheses, the exception being in the case of satisfaction with work among whites. White married women working full time seem just as dependent on satisfaction with work for their happiness as do white men, although the dependence does not seem very great in either case. In contrast, among blacks in the sample, both the zero-order correlation and the partial unstandardized regression of global happiness on satisfaction with work are significantly more positive among men than among women, the one-tailed signifi- cance levels being .001 and .025, respectively. 5 Most of the male-female comparisons of the

relationship of marital happiness to global happiness reveal differences in the predicted direction, and several of the differences are statistically significant. For instance, when only persons working full time are used for the white comparison, the one-tailed signifi- cance level for the difference between the zero-order correlations is .001 and for the difference between the partial regression coefficients it is .05. When all married women are substituted in the comparison, the difference between the zero-order correla- tions is still in the predicted direction and statistically significant (p 4.02), but the partial unstandardized regression coefficient is slightly larger for men than for women. For blacks, however, significant differences in the predicted direction occur only when all married women are included in the compari- son, rather than just those working full time (the one-tailed significance level being .05 for both the difference between the correlations and the difference between the partial regression coefficients).

The male-female differences are overshad- owed by the apparent extent to which the quality of marriage is important to the overall well-being of persons of both sexes. In Table 2, the explained variance in the dependent variable is divided into the variance uniquely explained by marital happiness, the variance uniquely explained by all of the seven satisfaction variables considered as a whole, and the variance shared by marital happiness and the satisfaction variables. For all married black women and for full-time employed

In computing the tests of significance, we multiplied all standard errors by 1.3 as a correction for the cluster design of the samples. For the rationale for this procedure, see Glenn (1977).

5One-tailed tests are used since the direction of the differences is predicted by the hypothesis.

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TABLE 2. PERCENTAGE ALLOCATION OF THE EXPLAINED VARIANCE SHOWN IN TABLE 1 AMONG ITS SOURCES

Married Persons Working Full Time All Married Women

Men Women

Source Whites Blacks Whites Blacks Whites Blacks

Explained Uniquely by Marital Happiness 39.7 7.2 37.5 20.6 25.1 48.8 Explained Uniquely by Satisfaction

Variablesa 34.4 75.5 27.8 72.0 42.7 26.4 Shared by Marital Happiness and the

Satisfaction Variables 25.9 17.3 34.6 7.4 32.2 24.8

Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 aConsidered as a whole. Variance allocated to this source includes that shared by the different satisfaction

variables.

whites (both men and women), marital happiness uniquely explains more variance than do all seven satisfaction variables together. For all married white women, marital happiness explains more than half as much variance than is explained by all of the satisfaction variables taken together. Only for blacks working full time is marital happiness a rather weak predictor when compared with the satisfaction variables as a whole.

The crosstabulation of global happiness with marital happiness presented in Table 3 reveals that for all race-sex subpopulations, a happy marriage seems virtually necessary for a high level of global happiness. Even those persons who say that their marriages are "pretty happy" very rarely report that they are "very happy" personally. Although studies of the correlates of reported global happiness have consistently shown that being married is among the strongest, if not the strongest, predictor of happiness (e.g., Bradburn and Caplovitz, 1965; Knupfer et al., 1966; Bradburn, 1969; Glenn and Weaver, 1979), data reported by Glenn (1975), when compared with the data in Table 3, reveal that unmarried people-- whether they be never-married, divorced, or widowed-are considerably more likely to say

that they are "very happy" than are married people who fail to report the highest level of happiness for their marriages.6 In other words, so far as psychological well-being is concerned, a poor marriage does not seem to be better than no marriage at all.

In contrast, the crosstabulation of global happiness with work satisfaction presented in Table 4 does not indicate that high work satisfaction is almost necessary for a high level of personal happiness. Whereas only 4.1 percent of the respondents with the lowest level of reported marital happiness said that they were "very happy," 21.8 percent of those with the lowest level of reported work satisfaction gave that response. Although persons who said that they were "very satisfied" with their work were distinctly more likely than others to say that they were "very happy," global happiness seems to bear little relationship to work satisfaction below the highest level of satisfaction.

6Data from the 1972, 1973, and 1974 General Social Surveys showed that the percentage of persons who said they were "very happy" was 19.7, 18.7, and 19.7, respectively, for never-married, divorced, and widowed white men. The corresponding percentages for white women are 24.7, 17.2, and 25.9.

TABLE 3. PERCENTAGE OF MARRIED PERSONS WHO SAID THEY WERE "VERY HAPPY"

Men Women Marital Happiness Whites Blacks Whites Blacks Total

Very Happy (N) 52.6 (1,823) 49.6 (129) 62.8 (1,938) 53.4 (116) 57.4 (4,006) Pretty Happy (N) 11.5 (719) 8.7 (103) 11.2 (867) 4.0 (101) 10.8 (1,790) Not Too Happy (N) 6.3 (48) 0 (6) 2.2 (91) 7.4 (27) 4.1 (172) Total 40.3 (2,590) 30.7 (238) 45.4 (2,896) 27.9 (244) 41.9 (5,968)

Source. Computed from the cumulative 1973-1978 data file of the General Social Surveys (James A. Davis, prin- cipal investigator).

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TABLE 4. PERCENTAGE OF MARRIED PERSONS WORKING FULL TIME WHO SAID THEY WERE "VERY HAPPY"

Men Women

Satisfaction With Work Whites Blacks Whites Blacks Total

Very Satisfied (N) 47.1 (1,219) 39.6 (101) 53.0 (508) 28.6 (42) 47.9 (1,870) Moderately Satisfied (N) 28.9 (897) 16.7 (90) 34.2 (304) 21.6 (51) 29.0 (1,252) A Little Dissatisfied (N) 23.7 (173) :21.2 (33) 29.9 (67) 21.4 (14) 24.7 (287) Very Dissatisfied (N) 18.3 (71) 14.3 (7) 35.0 (20) 33.3 (3) 21.8 (101) Total 37.9 (2,270) 27.3 (231) 44.5 (899) 24.5 (110) 38.5 (3,510)

Source. Computed from the cumulative 1973-1978 data file of the General Social Surveys (James A. Davis, prin- cipal investigator).

DISCUSSION

Data consisting of reports of emotions and feelings must always be viewed with a certain amount of caution, since they are subject to response bias. Some respondents may be reluctant to reveal negative feelings to the interviewers. In other cases, the responses are likely to reflect the respondents' momentary, rather than long-term feelings, and it is almost always the latter which are of interest to researchers. When reports of different dimensions of psychological well-being are related to one another, some of the intercorrelation is likely to reflect coi. 'lated response bias. That is, respondents who are inclined to overreport or underreport one kind of well-being (because of either long term predispositions or momentary feelings) are likely also to be inclined to overreport or underreport other kinds of well-being.

However, correlated response bias is a serious problem for this study only if it increases some of the correlations between dimensions of well-being substantially more than it increases others. The main conclusion to be derived from the findings of this study-that marital happiness generally makes a greater contribution to global happiness than does any other specific dimension of well-being covered by the study-is placed in doubt by taking into account possible correlated response bias only if it is likely that the bias contributes more to the measured relationship between marital and global happiness than to the measured relationships between the kinds of satisfaction and global happiness. We doubt that any such difference exists. In fact, we suspect that response bias lowers, rather than raises, the correlation between marital and global happiness. In view of the quite

different distribution of responses among the identical response categories of the two questions, it seems likely that there is a greater tendency to overreport marital happiness than to overreport global happi- ness. For instance, among the respondents from whom the data in Table 3 were taken, 67.1 percent said that their marriages were "very happy," but only 41.9 percent said that they as persons were "very happy." It seems to us that while there are good reasons to doubt that two thirds of all married Ameri- cans really have very happy marriages, there is little reason to believe that the reports of personal happiness are greatly exaggerated7 If our suspicions are correct, the real distri- butions of the two variables are more similar than the data indicate, and the real correla- tion of the two variables is almost certainly higher than the data indicate.

In any event, the evidence from this and related studies is highly persuasive, even though it is not absolutely conclusive. Unless contradictory evidence is presented, the most reasonable conclusion to be drawn about marriage and personal happiness in the contemporary United States is that for most adults happiness depends upon having a good marriage more than upon anything else. This apparent fact is a good reason for giving family life education high priority in high school and college curricula, for allocating a large proportion of federal research funds to topics relating to marriage, and for similar policy decisions.

7One might argue, on the other hand, that the appar- ent difference between the levels of marital and global happiness is real and results from the high propensity for persons unhappy with their marriages to divorce and thus to no longer be reflected in the data. However, we believe that it is very likely that marital happiness is systematically overreported.

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If this conclusion is correct, it also has strong implications for current debates about what is happening to marriage in the United States and other modern societies. Many journalists and other social commentators, but few serious students of marriage, believe or seem to believe that the increased instab- ility of individual marriages in recent years reflects a decreased importance of the institution of marriage. The findings of this study are not essential to an effective rebuttal of that view, but they add strength to the rebuttal.

We suspect that the crucial importance of a good marriage to the happiness of adult Americans contributes a great deal to the current high divorce rate. Given that (1) a poor marriage almost always is accompanied by personal unhappiness, (2) even unmarried people are happier on the average than those in poor marriages, (3) a large proportion of divorced persons eventually enter into satisfactory remarriages (Glenn and Weaver, 1977), and (4) the dominant values encourage persons to give precedence to seeking their personal happiness rather than to fulfilling obligations to others, a high propensity to terminate unsatisfactory marriages is almost inevitable. Only the influences which produce many poor marriages (about which there is considerable social scientific literature) need to be added to account for the present high divorce rate.

Therefore, we arrive at a tentative conclusion, which we set forth as a hypothesis to guide future research: Everything else being equal, the divorce rate will vary positively with the extent to which marriage is depended on for personal happiness. Several specific hypotheses can be derived from this general one and from hunches about, or knowledge of, how dependence on marriage for happiness varies among societies or subpopulations within one society. For instance, one might hypothesize that (1) Americans rely more on their marriages for their personal happiness than do people in most other modern societies, and (2) this difference accounts for the divorce rate being higher in the United States than in most of the other societies.

The alert reader will remember that we have reported some data in this paper ostensibly inconsistent with the general

hypothesis: Black men seem less dependent on their marriages for happiness than do white men, and yet it is well known that the divorce rate is higher for blacks than for whites in the United States. 8 One might argue that this apparent negative evidence results from "everything else" not being equal for whites and blacks. However, we suspect that the explanation is not that simple, that the general hypothesis needs some qualification and modification to make it fit the empirical evidence. Perhaps the hypothesis is correct only when husbands and wives have about equal dependence on marriage or, perhaps, the situation most conducive to divorce is for one spouse to have high dependence and the other low. Appar- ently, such an imbalance often exists in black marriages, since black women seem as dependent on their marriages, as a whole, as do whites (Table 1).9 It may be that the wife's happiness is often very dependent on the quality of the marriage, and thus she will be highly motivated to divorce if the marriage becomes unsatisfactory, but the husband is not dependent enough on the marriage to be highly motivated to try to keep it satisfactory.

The findings of this study are consistent with the view that most people depend largely on their primary social relationships for their happiness and that in the contemporary United States it is difficult to establish satis- factory and secure primary relations outside of the conjugal family. Furthermore, the findings suggest that American adults, in general, do not readily derive the kind of psychological support from relations with children and other kin that they derive from a good marriage. To most American adults, marriage seems to be the all-important relationship.

From the standpoint of the goal of attaining a high level of psychological

8For instance, among the respondents to the 1973 and 1974 General Social Surveys, 37.9 percent of the black Protestants, 20.0 percent of the white Protestants, and 14.6 percent of the white Catholics had at some point been divorced or legally separated (Glenn and Gotard, 1977).

9And the difference between black men and women in the estimated effect of marital happiness on global happiness is statistically significant. See Footnote 4 above.

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well-being, one might well question the desirability of individuals' depending so heavily upon one fragile relationship for their happiness. It is not easy to suggest how the dependence on marriage could be lessened, and it is beyond the scope of this paper to attempt to do that. However, employing some means for shifting some of the emotional dependence away from marriage, if the means could be devised, might be the most effective single strategy for alleviating problems associated with marriage.

REFERENCES Andrews, F. M., and S. B. Withey

1976 Social Indicators of Well-Being: Americans'

Perceptions of Life Quality. New York:Plenum

Publishing. Blalock, H. M., Jr.

1963 "Correlated independent variables: The prob- lem of multi-collinearity." Social Forces 42 (December):223-237.

Bradburn, N. M. 1969 The Structure of Psychological Well-Being.

Chicago:Aldine Publishing Company.

Bradburn, N. M., and D. Caplovitz 1965 Reports on Happiness. Chicago:Aldine Pub-

lishing Company. Campbell, A., P. E. Converse, and W. L. Rodgers

1976 The Quality of American Life: Perceptions, Evaluations and Satisfactions. New York:Rus- sell Sage Foundation.

Glenn, N. D. 1975 "The contribution of marriage to the psycho-

logical well-being of males and females." Journal of Marriage and the Family 37

(August): 594-600. 1977 Cohort Analysis. Beverly Hills:Sage Publica-

tions. Glenn, N. D., and E. Gotard

1977 "The religion of blacks in the United States: Some recent trends and current characteris- tics." American Journal of Sociology 83 (Sept- ember):443-451.

Glenn, N. D., and C. N. Weaver 1977 "The marital happiness of remarried divorced

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APPENDIX

Questions Used to Measure Global Happiness and the Specific Dimensions of Psychological Well-Being

1. Taken all together, how would you say things are these days-would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?

2. Taking things all together, how would you describe your marriage? Would you say that your marriage is very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?

3. On the whole, how satisfied are you with the work you do-would you say you are very satisfied, moderately satisfied, a little dissatisfied, or very dissatisfied?

4. We are interested in how people are getting along financially these days. So far as you and your family are concerned, would you say that you are pretty well satisfied with your present financial situation, more or less satisfied, or not satisfied at all?

5. For each area of life I am going to name, tell me the number that shows how much satisfaction you get from that area? 1. A very great deal; 2. A great deal; 3. Quite a lot; 4. A fair amount; 5. Some; 6. A little; 7. None. The city or place you live in.

6. Your nonworking activities-hobbies and so on. 7. Your family life. 8. Your friendships. 9. Your health and physical condition.

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