Married people have a much greater chance of happiness than others, according to David Cameron’s survey of the nation’s wellbeing reports the Daily Mail. Almost a third of husbands and wives rate their level of life satisfaction at the very top of the Prime Minister’s ten-point happiness scale, figures published yesterday show. Just over a quarter of people living with a partner mark their life satisfaction that highly. Even those who were once married and lost their partners were happier than cohabitees, the figures showed, with more widows and widowers rating themselves at the top of the wellbeing table than cohabitees. 

 

The latest evidence of the benefits of marriage comes in the happiness survey, which was introduced to help guide Government policy and is conducted by the Office for National Statistics.

 

The survey on satisfaction by marital status, in which people mark their own wellbeing on a scale of nought to ten, found 32.2 per cent of married people score themselves at nine or ten. This compares with an average of 8.2 for the population as a whole. Some 26.1 per cent of cohabitees rate themselves at nine and ten, which is classed by the ONS as a ‘very high’ satisfaction level.  Among widows and widowers, 27 per cent give themselves the highest mark. Read more