ABSTRACT
The most straightforward definition of single, often used by the Census Bureau, is a legal one: People are single if they are not legally married. Legally single people include people who are divorced and widowed as well as those who have always been single. There are hundreds of studies comparing the life outcomes of people of different marital statuses. Research on happiness is so popular that when Luhmann and her colleagues set out to do a meta-analysis of some of the most sophisticated studies available, prospective studies in which subjective well-being was measured before and after the marriage, multiple times, they found 18 studies that qualified. Many cross-sectional studies of happiness have also been conducted. Of course, such studies cannot support causal inferences. They are especially biased to produce results that favor marriage when only those people who are currently married.
