“The problem? That finding is the result of a grievous misunderstanding on Dolan’s part of how the American Time Use Survey works. The people conducting the survey didn’t ask married people how happy they were, shoo their spouses out of the room, and then ask again. Dolan had misinterpreted one of the categories in the survey, “spouse absent,” which refers to married people whose partner is no longer living in their household, as meaning the spouse stepped out of the room.”
To be fair, the author of the original study still believes that married women are less happy, even after realizing this mistake, but others disagree and think the evidence does not point that way.
Totally reasonable, thanks for pointing it out.
Given that Dolan was repeating in his article the Sociology 101 claim that married women have shorter lives, I’d expect him to also reference those studies. (I have seen some controversy about this online, with some people now saying married and single women have similar lifespans with only divorcees having shorter lives, but I’m not yet convinced.)
EDIT: I’ve done bit more reading and now think married women do have better health than unmarried, or at least the effects are ambiguous—although it’s hard to tell which direction the causality goes.
I don’t know what the time period is, but at the risk of saying the obvious, the historical rate of maternal mortality is much higher than it is today in the First World.
Our world in data[1] estimates historical rates at .5-1% per birth. So assuming 6 births per woman[2], you get 3-6% of married women dying from childbirth alone, at a relatively young age.
there’s literally a strong causal relationship between marriage and having a shorter lifespan.
What causal relationship are you alluding to? As far as I can tell, the data you mention three comments above establishes a correlation between marriage and mortality, not causation. Moreover, that data also appears to show that the mechanism implicated in this correlation is complications during childbirth, which rules out marriage as the causal factor.
Hmm, so to be explicit, the claim I’m making is that marriage has a causal effect on mortality, mediated through complications in childbirth.
In Pearl’s do-calculus, this is
1. Marriage → greater rates of childbirth → Death.
I haven’t fully established this connection. The main way this argument falls is if it turns out marriage does not increase rates of childbirth. I assumed that marriage increases childbirth, but I admit to not looking into it.
I think when people are thinking about a strong causal relationship between marriage and mortality, they are mostly thinking of other mediating variables (weak claim, since most things are not childbirth). So:
2. Marriage → (collection of other mediating variables) → Death.
However, based on your and Liam’s comments, I’m starting to suspect that both of you mean causality in a much more direct sense. In that framework, perhaps the only relationship that will be considered “causal” should be:
3. Marriage → Death (no mediating variable).
If that is the case for your definition of causality, I agree that #3 is pretty unlikely. I also think it’s too strong since it probably rules out eg, smoking causing death (since you can’t use the mediating variable of lung cancer).
Your comment helped me understand this discussion better. It seems I was indeed assuming causality in the stronger sense, though I now see there wasn’t much justification for this assumption. As you point out, the stronger sense would fail to vindicate many relationships we generally take to be causal.
I still feel reluctant to assert that marriage causes death from the data you provided. Maybe it’s because I’m not sure what type of link exists between marriage and higher rates of childbirth. Though it seems clear that married people have more children, I’m not sure it’s correct to say that marriage causes people to have more children. People often get married because they want to have children. Even when this is not the initial motivation, it seems odd to say that marriage explains why these people have children. By contrast, the link between smoking and cancer seems much more tight.
I haven’t thought much about whether the causal attributions we make in social science tend to be more similar to “marriage causes higher rates of childbirth” or to “smoking causes higher rates of cancer”.
Very interesting analysis! The study on passionate love and cognition might be more about early stage love right? If so, this would be a small cost of the intervention. As an observational data point suggesting positive economic impacts, married men earn up to 70% more than single men (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/married-men-earn-more-than-single-or-married-women-and-single-men-2018-09-19).
On the other hand, women who marry men die earlier than women who stay single, so marriage doesn’t necessarily improve life for everyone
Could be, or could be the usual causation=/=correlation problem, or the usual study that doesn’t replicate. What study are you referring to?
I’ve seen it a few places. This article seems like a good place to start if you want to start looking at literature on it—it discusses both happiness and lifespan. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/25/women-happier-without-children-or-a-spouse-happiness-expert
I think there are problems with the study that article is based on, as outlined here:
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/4/18650969/married-women-miserable-fake-paul-dolan-happiness
“The problem? That finding is the result of a grievous misunderstanding on Dolan’s part of how the American Time Use Survey works. The people conducting the survey didn’t ask married people how happy they were, shoo their spouses out of the room, and then ask again. Dolan had misinterpreted one of the categories in the survey, “spouse absent,” which refers to married people whose partner is no longer living in their household, as meaning the spouse stepped out of the room.”
To be fair, the author of the original study still believes that married women are less happy, even after realizing this mistake, but others disagree and think the evidence does not point that way.
Totally reasonable, thanks for pointing it out. Given that Dolan was repeating in his article the Sociology 101 claim that married women have shorter lives, I’d expect him to also reference those studies. (I have seen some controversy about this online, with some people now saying married and single women have similar lifespans with only divorcees having shorter lives, but I’m not yet convinced.)
EDIT: I’ve done bit more reading and now think married women do have better health than unmarried, or at least the effects are ambiguous—although it’s hard to tell which direction the causality goes.
Do you have a link and/or a brief explanation of how they convincingly established causality for the “married women have shorter lives” claim?
I don’t know what the time period is, but at the risk of saying the obvious, the historical rate of maternal mortality is much higher than it is today in the First World.
Our world in data[1] estimates historical rates at .5-1% per birth. So assuming 6 births per woman[2], you get 3-6% of married women dying from childbirth alone, at a relatively young age.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/maternal-mortality
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#the-number-of-children-per-woman-over-the-very-long-run
I think it’s misleading to call that evidence that marriage causes shorter lifespans (not sure if that’s your intention)
I mean, there’s literally a strong causal relationship between marriage and having a shorter lifespan.
I assume sociologists are usually referring to other effects however.
What causal relationship are you alluding to? As far as I can tell, the data you mention three comments above establishes a correlation between marriage and mortality, not causation. Moreover, that data also appears to show that the mechanism implicated in this correlation is complications during childbirth, which rules out marriage as the causal factor.
Hmm, so to be explicit, the claim I’m making is that marriage has a causal effect on mortality, mediated through complications in childbirth.
In Pearl’s do-calculus, this is
1. Marriage → greater rates of childbirth → Death.
I haven’t fully established this connection. The main way this argument falls is if it turns out marriage does not increase rates of childbirth. I assumed that marriage increases childbirth, but I admit to not looking into it.
I think when people are thinking about a strong causal relationship between marriage and mortality, they are mostly thinking of other mediating variables (weak claim, since most things are not childbirth). So:
2. Marriage → (collection of other mediating variables) → Death.
However, based on your and Liam’s comments, I’m starting to suspect that both of you mean causality in a much more direct sense. In that framework, perhaps the only relationship that will be considered “causal” should be:
3. Marriage → Death (no mediating variable).
If that is the case for your definition of causality, I agree that #3 is pretty unlikely. I also think it’s too strong since it probably rules out eg, smoking causing death (since you can’t use the mediating variable of lung cancer).
Your comment helped me understand this discussion better. It seems I was indeed assuming causality in the stronger sense, though I now see there wasn’t much justification for this assumption. As you point out, the stronger sense would fail to vindicate many relationships we generally take to be causal.
I still feel reluctant to assert that marriage causes death from the data you provided. Maybe it’s because I’m not sure what type of link exists between marriage and higher rates of childbirth. Though it seems clear that married people have more children, I’m not sure it’s correct to say that marriage causes people to have more children. People often get married because they want to have children. Even when this is not the initial motivation, it seems odd to say that marriage explains why these people have children. By contrast, the link between smoking and cancer seems much more tight.
I haven’t thought much about whether the causal attributions we make in social science tend to be more similar to “marriage causes higher rates of childbirth” or to “smoking causes higher rates of cancer”.
[Retracted]
I’m pretty convinced by Kelsey’s summary here of why Paul Dolan’s methods were substantively lacking: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/4/18650969/married-women-miserable-fake-paul-dolan-happiness
Kelsey has stronger words on (public) Facebook.