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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.
Key Words: families and individuals in societal contexts, family economics, gender roles, marriage, trends, well-being.
A large body of literature shows that married people are happier and more satisfied with their lives than unmarried persons (see, e.g., Gove, Style, & Hughes, 1990; Mastekaasa, 1994; Stack & Eshleman, 1998; Verbakel, 2012), yet growing divorce and cohabitation rates and falling marriage and fertility rates suggest a "retreat from marriage" (see, e.g., Adams, 2004; Cherlin, 2004; Huston & Melz, 2004; Popenoe, 1993). Research shows that the life satisfaction advantage of being married (defined as the difference between the population-based averages of the life satisfaction of married and unmarried persons) has decreased over time in the United States (Glenn & Weaver, 1988). This suggests that marriages in contemporary societies have become less advantageous than they were in the past.
Over recent decades, another change has occurred: Men and women now allocate their time in a more similar way than they did in the past (Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, & Robinson, 2000). The employment of women, even those who are married and have children, is now accepted in most developed countries (Brewster & Rindfuss, 2000; Sayer & Bianchi, 2000). The general trend is of a decline in specialization, defined as gendered divisions of tasks within married couples between the labor market (typically assigned to men) and the household work (typically performed by women). Although theoretical approaches in both economics and...