BEING THE SOLE BREADWINNER MAKES MEN DEPRESSED, WOMEN HAPPY

(August, 2016) A new study, presented at the American Sociological Association’s annual conference in Seattle, looked at 15 years of data on married people between the ages of 18 and 32 from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The data definitely seems to indicate that, in general, as men take responsibility for greater and greater shares of the couple’s pooled income, they experience declines in their psychological well-being and health. Lead author Christin Munsch, an assistant professor of sociology at University of Connecticut, found that men are at their lowest when they are their families’ only breadwinner. That’s when happiness scores fall to 5% lower and health scores 3.5% lower, on average, than when both partners pitch in equally. But for women, carrying a heavier financial load has the opposite effect. As they earn more, their psychological well-being rises.
* ‘Cause they can shop more.
* Men – try this out at dinner tonight: “Honey, I’m sad. You need to get a job.”
* 5% less happy? How ever do we make it from day to day?
* 5% less happy sounds like something you could cure with three beers and a half an hour of internet porn.
* By the way, in light of the War on Obesity, I have to strenuously object to the term “breadwinner.”
* Why don’t you just force-feed carbs to everyone?
* See? That’s my new move. I get offended before anyone else has a chance.
* That reminds me: How sexist is this study to compare how women act to how men act?
* You would think an association like this would have gotten past that archaic gender-based crap.
* I wonder how the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth compares with the National Latitudinal Survey of Youth?
* I’ll bet the results are at right-angles to each other.