It is a finding that Wally, the hard-pressed husband of Nora Batty in Last of the Summer Wine, would no doubt readily have agreed with. 
 
 A study of the everyday lives of thousands of retired couples has concluded that the secret of contentment for men is to ensure that their wife is happy with their marriage. 
 
 Even men who actively view their own marriage as miserable are still able to enjoy a higher level of general happiness if their wife is content on the domestic front, the study by leading US sociologists concludes. 
 
 But, strikingly, the researchers found that there was no clear link in the opposite direction. Women who feel trapped in an unhappy marriage are not more likely to be content in other areas of life if their husband is happy at home. 
 
 The reason, they concluded, could be that women who consider their marriage happy are more likely to care for their husband, including feeding him and doing the housework, enhancing his general quality of life. 
 
 Happily married women are also more likely to boost their husband’s ego by praising him and less likely to give him the kind of tongue-lashing the broom-wielding Nora Batty specialised in doling out, they noted. 
 
 Men by contrast take a more “silent approach” to emotional matters and are less likely to communicate their feelings – good or bad – to their wives, they said. 
 
 The study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family suggested that the distinct “gendered roles” the couples had maintained in their lives meant that men and women reacted differently to the state of their marriage. 
 
 The researchers, led by Prof Deborah Carr of Rutgers University in New Jersey, used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a research project which has been recording details of the lives of an original sample of around 18,000 Americans since the late 1960s. 
 
 As part of the study, some of the participants over 60 were asked to fill in a diary charting a typical day in their life and take part in interviews where they were asked standard questions to rate their overall happiness on a scale of nought to six. 
 
 They were also asked how often they argue, whether their spouse understands them or whether their husband or wife “gets on your nerves”. The responses were then also converted into a score. 
 
 Overall there was little difference between men and women’s general happiness, which was around five out of six on average. Men generally rated their marriage slightly higher than women. 
 
 For both sexes there was also a strong link between the quality of their marriage and how happy they were. Overall each one point increase in how highly people rated their marriage was associated with a higher happiness rating of between half and three quarters of one point. 
 
 But when they compared spouses’ responses to assess whether they affected each other’s scores, they noticed a marked divide between the sexes. 
 
 “We found that the strength of association between a man’s marital quality assessment and his life satisfaction is contingent on his wife’s marital appraisals,” they explained. 
 
 “A man who views his marriage very unfavourably may still enjoy relatively high levels of life satisfaction if his wife views the marriage favourably. 
 
 “However, a similarly pronounced pattern did not emerge among women.” 
 
 Drawing from a series of earlier studies, they argued that the patterns could reflect “gendered interactions and communication” within marriage. 
 
 “A happily married woman may be highly motivated to provide care and practical support to her spouse, such that even an unhappily married man may receive practical benefits that enhance his overall well-being,” they explained. 
 
 “Moreover, women are more likely to try to engage partners in marital issues, whether a happily married woman is praising positive aspects or an unhappily married woman is criticising her husband. 
 
 “By contrast, men tend to take a more passive or silent approach, whereby their feelings toward the marriage may not be conveyed to their spouse. 
 
 "Given men’s more passive style of marital interaction, their marital unhappiness may not compound their wives’ marital dissatisfaction to affect her overall well-being.” 
 
 Harry Benson of the Marriage Foundation think-tank said: “There is plenty of research that says happy mother makes happy family but this is interesting because it suggests that even when the children have grown up and left there is still a noticeable effect. 
 
 “The mother is the centre-point of the family – if she is happy then the family basically operates well. 
 
 “That sends a message to men that they have got to look after their wives and make sure that they are happy – which is something I am constantly reminded of.” ||||| Researchers delve into data from three separate surveys and conclude married individuals are “more satisfied, suggesting a causal effect, even after full allowance is made for selection effects.” Agence France-Presse/Getty Images 
 
 Marriage may help people navigate a midlife crisis. 
 
 A new paper by Shawn Grover, a policy analyst at Canada’s Department of Finance, and John Helliwell, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, finds that married people are generally happier than unmarried people. 
 
 It’s a well-researched area and typically opens up debate over whether the effect is one of correlation or causation–are generally happier people simply more likely to get married in the first place? 
 
 Messrs. Grover and Helliwell delve into data from three separate surveys and conclude married individuals are “more satisfied, suggesting a causal effect, even after full allowance is made for selection effects.” 
 
 The benefits may be greatest immediately after marriage but aren’t fleeting and appear to have the most important impact in middle age. And the effect is especially strong for close couples. 
 
 “The well-being benefits of marriage are on average about twice as large for those…whose spouse is also their best friend,” the study adds. 
 
 The study’s findings could be depressing for Americans who appear to be giving up on marriage. 
 
 The authors use the United Kingdom’s Annual Population Survey, the British Household Panel Survey and the Gallup World Poll in their research. The data allows them to gauge life satisfaction of individuals before and after marriage and, indeed, those more satisfied with life are also more likely to get married. 
 
 But they also stay happier than unmarried people. Generally, life satisfaction tends to follow a “U-shape,” deteriorating through early adulthood and bottoming out in the late 40s before picking up again. The “U” is steeper and deeper for unmarried than married people. 
 
 “One hypothesis that could explain why the U-shape in life satisfaction over age is deeper for the unmarried than the married is that the social support provided by a spouse helps ease the stresses of middle age,” the authors said. 
 
 The marriage effect can vary across cultures but appears to lead to greater overall well-being everywhere except Sub-Saharan Africa, the authors said. 
 
 Related reading: 
 
 More Americans Forgo Marriage as Economic Difficulties Hit Home 
 
 Will a Cheap Wedding Help Your Marriage? A Lesson in Causation 
 
 More Women Over 35 Are Having Kids Out of Marriage 
 
 The Earnings Gap Between Married and Non-Married Moms is Widening 
 
 More Americans Are Saying ‘I Do’ Again and Again and Again 
 
 One Cause of Inequality: More Rich Marrying One Another ||||| It’s a morsel of manly wisdom that gets passed from husband to husband, usually with a cold drink or pair of barbecue tongs in hand: A happy wife is a happy life. Marriage, the platitude assumes, isn’t a two-way street of communication and compassion. It’s keeping her flame from igniting into a two-alarmer. 
 
 A new study suggests the credo isn’t just a rule of thumb; it may be a well-founded social dynamic. Researchers from Rutgers University and the University of Michigan found no matter how happy or unhappy men were with their marriage, the happier wives were with the marriage, the happier men were in general. Given the extent to which the findings involve caring for sick spouses in old age, researchers argue marriage quality deserves attention from both partners. 
 
 As you might expect, “for both spouses being in a better-rated marriage was linked to greater life satisfaction and happiness,” said Rutgers sociologist Deborah Carr in a statement. However, as Carr also points out, it just so happens men are kind of ambivalent when it comes to what’s going on in their own lives. “Men tend to be less vocal about their relationships,” she said. “And their level of marital unhappiness might not be translated to their wives.” 
 
 Carr and her co-researcher, Vicki Freedman, a research professor at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, gathered data on 394 older couples who were part of a national study of income, health, and disability in 2009. At least one spouse from each pair was over the age of 60, and, on average, couples had been married for 39 years. 
 
 Carr and Freedman asked participants things like how they felt about their marriage, how often their spouse argued with them, how much they felt their voice was heard, and whether their spouse got on their nerves. Each participant kept a detailed diary of how happy they were in the previous 24 hours while the couple did things like grocery shopping, watching TV, or cleaning the house. 
 
 One of the things that stood out to Carr and Freedman was the difference in attitudes depending on whether wives or husbands got sick. Women, for example, were quick to care for their ailing husband, and their happiness measures went down. But men were no less happy when their wives were sick. For the researchers, this signaled a fundamental gap in how each gender approached empathy. 
 
 We know that when a partner is sick it is the wife that often does the caregiving which can be a stressful experience,” Carr said. “But often when a woman gets sick it is not her husband she relies on but her daughter.” 
 
 The study comes with some natural limits. Carr and Freedman didn’t set out to make any claims regarding younger couples, who may adopt more egalitarian roles in the home. Older couples may share equal responsibility in cleaning the toilet or washing the grime off the bath tub, but differ in how they communicate their emotions. Younger generations are becoming less comfortable with the idea of sole breadwinners sitting out household duties. Instead, they cozy up to the idea that everything is split 50/50, right down to personal happiness. 
 
 Cultivating this sense of reciprocity early is important, Carr says, because when it comes time for a partner to pick up the slack — say, when a husband or wife falls ill — couples will want that skill to be a strength. “The quality of a marriage is important because it provides a buffer against the health-depleting effects of later life stressors,” Carr said, “and helps couples manage difficult decisions regarding health and medical decision making.” 
 
 Source: Carr D, Freedman V, Cornman J, Schwarz N. Happy Marriage, Happy Life? Marital Quality and Subjective Well-being in Later Life. Journal of Marriage and Family. 2014.
– While there are a bunch of studies showing that married folks seem to be happier than those who've stuck to singledom, a new study out of Bowling Green State University has found an apparent exception: older women who've never said "I do," per Live Science. The research, presented at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in August, culled almost 40 years of data from the University of Chicago's national General Social Survey, in which more than 51,000 US adults were asked to rate their typical happiness level as "very happy," "pretty happy," or "not too happy." Researchers then compared data from various groups, including the never-marrieds, the still-marrieds, divorced people, and those who had lost their spouses. The scientists also broke it down further for people ages 60 and older, as widowed and divorced people tend to be on the older side. To their surprise, the researchers found "never-married, older women are, in a lot of years [of the survey], indistinguishable from ... married older women," co-researcher Gary Ralph Lee says, noting the same didn't hold true on the men's side—never-married males tended to have the same happiness levels as divorced and widowed men. The survey didn't allow for more insight into why the older ladies seem to be more content, though Lee mentions it could be that they've learned to adapt to being single and they instead draw satisfaction from careers, friends, and family. While not speaking specifically to the older female demographic, D'Marge does point out a few studies that have suggested singles exercise more, maintain better social networks, and may not be as vulnerable to depression as their married friends. (How happy you are depends on how you deal with conflict.)