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Religion, Marriage and Happiness – Evidence from Taiwan

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Abstract

Existing literature has provided ample evidence indicating a positive relationship between marriage and happiness across many countries except Taiwan, where marriage seems irrelevant to happiness. No research to date has empirically shown what exactly contributes to such a phenomenon. This study, using the Taiwan Social Change Survey for 2012 as the study sample, found that religion strongly matters in determining the linkage between marriage and happiness. More specifically, results strongly indicate that married people are happier among Christians, but such phenomenon is unobserved among people affiliated with other religions. Hence, the previous finding of no gap in happiness between married and non-married people can be attributed to unique religious demography in Taiwan, where Christians are minority (4.89% based on the 2012 Survey) and the majority of population are affiliated with religions that do not emphasize marriage as much (e.g., Buddhism, Taoism, folk religion, and irreligion). Although this study provides strong evidence to support the important role of religion in determining the relationship between marriage and happiness, religion may not be the only factor that can explain the insignificant relationship between marriage and happiness in Taiwan. Future studies are recommended to explore the other reasons (e.g., gender) behind this observation.

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Notes

  1. Education is positively related to happiness likely because it helps increase self-confidence (Cuñado and de Gracia 2012), connect people to the world (Chen 2012), and increase income level and employment opportunities (Tsou and Liu 2001; Cuñado and de Gracia 2012; Chen 2012; Botha 2014). It is negatively related to happiness likely because high education is often accompanied by high expectation such that more educated people are less likely to be happy with the status quo (Clark and Oswald 1996).

  2. With respect to gender, a kind of studies indicated that men are happier than women (Botha 2014), another kind of research found the opposite (Chen 2012; Cuñado and de Gracia 2012), and Tsou and Liu (2001) found no gender gap in happiness.

  3. The relationship between the presence of children and happiness is found negative by some (Caporale et al. 2009) and found positive by others (Cuñado and de Gracia 2012).

  4. Chen (2012) examined four Asian countries and found a positive relationship between marriage and happiness particularly for Korea and Japan.

  5. With afterlife belief, adherents are purpose-driven and optimistic or forward-looking instead of dwelling in the past.

  6. Flannelly et al. (2006) found a positive relationship between afterlife belief and mental health.

  7. Religious people can develop a close relationship with god or other forms of spiritual relationship as well as fellowship with believers. Given the documented positive relationship between social network and happiness, religious network, which can be viewed as a kind of social network, should also promote happiness (Moghaddam 2008; Chen 2012).

  8. According to Wadsworth (2016), the ambience such as social norms matters in determining the relationship between marriage and happiness. More specifically, in surroundings where people form high expectation on marriage, getting married promotes happiness because it means that social expectation is successfully met such that one feels more comfortable and happier in so doing.

  9. Abrahamic religions are considered conservative in the sense that marriage and family are highly valued in such religions. Recent research also has shown that many adults in Orthodox Christian countries hold conservative views on family and gender (Salazar and Lipka 2017).

  10. Perry (2015) found that for those whose marriage decision is influenced by religions, their marital quality is higher when married with spouses with high religiosity. Such finding also indicates the relationship between religion and marital happiness.

  11. The study uses relative income for analysis rather than absolute income primarily because when people are sufficiently wealthy, it is relative income that matters in determining wellbeing. This is so-called Esterlin paradox. In fact, absolute income has been found to have little bearing on happiness in more developed countries (Chen 2012). We also found that the coefficient of absolute income is insignificant in estimation. Results are not reported for brevity.

  12. In addition to legal marriage, cohabitation or living common law is also considered marriage in the study. As in other developed countries, cohabitation is increasingly common in contemporary Taiwan. Hence, marriage in the study includes legal and common-law marriage. Given the low marriage rate in Taiwan, this approach broadens our coverage of married people in the study sample. It is also recognized that cohabitation is not allowed for devout Christians. According to the survey, the respondents who claimed they are Christians did not report cohabitation.

  13. Aboriginal, Class and Urban are not included in estimation to preserve the sample. Including them causes a decrease in sample size. However, given the importance of these three variables as shown in prior research, they are included in subsequent estimations for robustness check.

  14. The results based on the estimation of the generalized ordered probit model using sample partitions are unavailable primarily because of problems with small sample sizes.

  15. It should be noted that Health, Income, Contact, and Class are treated as continuous variables in the tables. If these variables are replaced with their corresponding categorical variables, major results remain. In particular, the results continue to indicate that Christians are happier when they get married and such phenomenon is unobserved among people affiliated with other religions. However, the results are not reported for brevity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Chiayi University, Chiayi, Taiwan

    Naiwei Chen

  2. National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan

    Ho-Chyuan Chen

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  1. Naiwei Chen
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Correspondence to Naiwei Chen.

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Chen, N., Chen, HC. Religion, Marriage and Happiness – Evidence from Taiwan. Applied Research Quality Life 16, 259–299 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-019-09765-6

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