Happiness, marriage and incentives

The usually excellent Paul Ormerod makes a questionable inference here:

Marriage makes people far less likely to suffer psychological illness, and more likely to live much longer and be both healthier and happier (pdf). The benefits are confined to those who are married rather than cohabiting. And these benefits are large...
In so far as policy conclusions can be drawn at this stage of happiness research, they seem to imply increased support for marriage, reductions in incentives to single parents...

I don't think these policy conclusions follow at all, for two reasons.
1. If married people are much happier than singletons, there's a case for taxing them more heavily - because doing so would promote equality of well-being. Why neglect welfare egalitarianism completely?
2. If marriage makes people happier, the only incentive people need is the knowledge that it does so. People aren't single because they lack incentives to be married. They're single because they lack the opportunity to be married. And this points to very different policy implications. It suggests policies should aim at giving people more opportunities to meet other people. This points to reducing presenteeism and wasteful commuting time, and possibly reducing the social and geographical mobility that create isolation and loneliness.
Point 2, I suspect, supports one of the wisest points made about happiness research - Will Wilkinson's claim that "it is too often a mirror: we look into the data and see our ideology reflected." And this in turn supports the key point Ormerod makes - that the state shouldn't aim at maximizing happiness at all.

Comments

[alan]

Woooah there me hearty! Have you missed out on the history of the twentieth century or something? Try this lady for size:
http://www.humanlifereview.com/2000_fall/meehan_f2000.php

- and there are many MANY more like her. Now, here's the guy who's run the best news service on it for the last xxx years:
http://www.angryharry.com/

Please read. The politicans' attack on our personal lives is of utmost importance to all of us plebs, that is to say, to those who blog.

[dearieme]

"They're single because they lack the opportunity to be married": some of them, perhaps, won't take on the risk of marriage because they feel the divorce laws might prove to be an engine for impoverishing them. Just a guess.

[Acad Ronin]

It is also possible that people who are more predisposed to be happier have an easier time finding mates and marrying.

[Mark Wadsworth]

Correct, government has no business telling people whether to get married or not. That said, reducing incentives for single parents seems like a good idea. Or as Dearime hints above, making divorce law a bit fairer, e.g. by having statutory pre-nups like in other European countries.

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