The study’s authors argue that this is because combining income has positive impact on a couple’s well-being if they’re strapped financially.
“We looked at the interrelationships between marriage, income and depression, and what we found is that the benefit of marriage on depression is really for people with average or lower levels of income,” Dr Kail, assistant professor of sociology at Georgia State, said. “Specifically, people who are married and earning less than $60,000 a year in total household income experience fewer symptoms of depression. But above that, marriage is not associated with the same kind of reduction in symptoms of depression.”
The research supports the theory that suggests that one of the health benefits of marriage includes pooling resources.
“For people who are earning above $60,000, they don’t get this bump because they already have enough resources,” Dr Kail said. “About 50 percent of the benefit these households earning less than $60,000 per year get from marriage is an increased sense of financial security and self-efficacy, which is probably from the pooling of resources.”
The study was one of the first ever to hint a downside to marriage after years of advice from experts that marriage makes people happy.