Childless couples happiest, says study

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Britain's happiest couples are married without children and less than five years into their relationship.

That is the conclusion of the first research from Understanding Society, a $100 million project which describes its aim as "nothing less than the creation of a living laboratory of British life".

According to the data gathered so far, happiness with one's partner declines with the duration of the union and with a person's age. Marriages are happier than cohabiting unions, a trend which rises for better-educated people. In turn, children are happier with their family situation if their parents are happy.

The happiest relationships are those less than five years in duration, between two people educated to degree level, who have no children and where the man is employed. The decline in happiness is steeper for women. Overall, older people are less happy in their relationships.

Among men, unemployment brings with it lower levels of happiness although income appears to be unrelated to relationship happiness among men and is only mildly important for women.

Of the young, 60 per cent are "completely satisfied" with their family situation and 70 per cent are very satisfied with their lives. Researcher Gundi Knies insists the two sets of findings are not contradictory. But her research also concludes that neither material wealth nor poverty have a bearing on children's life satisfaction.

Not living with both natural parents has a greater negative impact on a young person's life satisfaction than their material situation. But children are more satisfied with their lives the fewer other children live in their household.

The study has been commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council and will follow the lives of 40,000 households, interviewing 100,000 individuals of all ages, for at least the next 20 years. Its first findings provide a picture of recession Britain, through the eyes of 14,000 households in 2009. Out of 34,503 individuals surveyed, 2163 children between 10 and 15 gave interviews.

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