Researchers identify a factor linked to how much happier couples are than singles

People in romantic relationships typically report higher life satisfaction than single people, but a new study of more than 380,000 adults in Great Britain suggests that the size of this gap varies depending on where people live. The gap tended to be wider in areas where romantic partnerships were more common, mostly because partnered people in those areas reported higher satisfaction. The research was published in Psychological Science.

Relationship status simply refers to whether a person is currently in an intimate partnership or is single. Life satisfaction is an evaluation of how positive or fulfilling a person finds their overall life circumstances. In social psychology, the idea of person-culture match suggests that people experience higher well-being when their individual traits, beliefs, or lifestyle match the prevailing norms of their immediate community.

Prior studies suggest that the size of the life-satisfaction gap between partnered and single people is not the same everywhere. Married people tend to report higher life satisfaction than unmarried people, but the size of that difference varies across countries and U.S. states, and one U.S. analysis found that marriage was more strongly tied to life satisfaction in states where more residents were married.

Not every study has found a strong role for social norms, though: a 2012 study of 45 European countries found that a country’s family values had little bearing on the well-being gaps between partnership statuses, apart from a wider gap between divorced and married women in more family-oriented societies.

Other research suggests that community-level norms can shape how individual life circumstances affect personal well-being. For example, earlier work by some of the same researchers, covered by PsyPost in 2024, found that in regions with higher obesity prevalence, individuals with obesity experienced less severe relationship and health disadvantages compared to low-prevalence regions.

The current study aimed to bridge these lines of research to test whether local relationship rates relate to the well-being gap between singles and couples. “Many studies find that partnered people are happier than single people and such findings often read as evidence that romantic relationships are good for us,” lead researcher Tita Gonzalez Avilés of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Bamberg told PsyPost. “But the reasons behind this life satisfaction gap are not entirely clear. We wanted to shift the focus from the relationship itself to the regional contexts in which partnered and single people’s lives unfold.”

The research team reasoned that in areas with high relationship rates, couples might feel more supported and aligned with local relationship norms. Single individuals, on the other hand, might feel more excluded or experience greater social pressure in environments where couplehood is the dominant pattern.

To examine this question, the scientists analyzed data from the BBC Big Personality Test. The sample included 382,078 adults living across 379 local authority districts in Great Britain, administrative areas similar in size to counties in the United States. Participants answered questions about whether they were currently in an intimate relationship and rated their life satisfaction on a scale from one to seven.

The researchers calculated regional relationship rates by determining the percentage of participants in each district who reported being in an intimate relationship. District relationship rates ranged from about 55 percent in one London borough to 80 percent in the district of Bolsover. To isolate the role of local relationship rates, the authors controlled for individual characteristics including age, gender, education, employment, income, health, and personality traits, as well as district-level factors such as population density, median income, birth rates, median age, political leanings, and religious affiliation.

Across Great Britain as a whole, partnered individuals reported higher life satisfaction than single individuals. Partnered people scored about half a standard deviation higher on life satisfaction, a difference the authors noted is comparable to differences tied to employment status or health. These findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that people in intimate relationships report higher emotional well-being and life satisfaction compared to singles.

The results also align with research covered by PsyPost in 2025 that examined lifelong singlehood among primarily older adults and found lower life satisfaction among singles compared to partnered individuals.

“Although life satisfaction varied across regions, partnered individuals consistently reported higher life satisfaction compared to single individuals on average,” Gonzalez Avilés noted. “So, while regional context contributes to people’s life satisfaction, it cannot fully account for the gap between these two groups.”

When the researchers looked across regions, they found that the size of the gap varied based on the local relationship rate. In districts with the lowest relationship rates, the gap was 0.49 standard deviations; in districts with the highest rates, it was 0.63, an increase of nearly 29 percent. This widening gap was primarily driven by partnered individuals, who reported higher life satisfaction in high-relationship districts, while life satisfaction among single individuals remained relatively constant regardless of the local relationship rate.

The district-level pattern held across several robustness checks. The association remained consistent when using official census marriage and cohabitation rates instead of survey-derived relationship rates, when applying broader regional controls, and when using stricter minimum thresholds for district sample sizes.

In additional analyses that were not planned in advance, the researchers found that the gap was also larger in districts with lower median incomes, a higher share of votes to leave the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and more residents reporting a religious affiliation. In the more politically conservative and religious districts, the wider gap mainly reflected lower life satisfaction among single people. The authors note that they did not directly measure attitudes toward singlehood and describe their explanations for these patterns as speculative.

“We expected single people to be less satisfied where many others are partnered but found no evidence for this,” Gonzalez Avilés said. “What seemed to be more important for the single people was not how many people are partnered but the prevailing regional attitudes toward singlehood (i.e., single people being less satisfied in more conservative and religious regions).”

“Regional relationship norms and societal expectations can affect how partnered and single people evaluate their own life,” Gonzalez Avilés added.

In an exploratory analysis that was not registered in advance, the researchers evaluated whether the pattern held at a neighborhood scale across 52,836 participants in 218 postal districts in London. In postal districts with the lowest relationship rates, the gap was 0.41 standard deviations, compared to 0.62 in districts with the highest rates, reflecting an increase of about 51 percent. As in the national sample, this difference was mainly driven by partnered residents reporting greater satisfaction in neighborhoods where relationships were common.

The authors also examined whether people in high-relationship areas placed more importance on having a relationship. They found no evidence that couples or singles placed higher importance on being partnered in those areas. Single people in high-relationship areas actually placed slightly less importance on having a relationship, which the researchers speculate could reflect singles shifting their focus toward other life goals.

As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The sample consisted of online volunteers who chose to take a personality test between 2009 and 2011, and roughly 64 percent of the respondents were women. The data are also more than 15 years old. The authors did find that regional marriage rates in the survey closely mirrored 2011 census figures, which supports the accuracy of the geographic estimates.

The overall regional effect was modest, and partnered people reported higher life satisfaction than singles even in districts with the lowest relationship rates. Because the data were correlational, the study cannot establish cause and effect. Happier couples might simply be more inclined to move to communities where relationships are more prevalent.

“We did not test why partnered individuals were more satisfied in regions where romantic relationships were more common,” Gonzalez Avilés explained. “It may be that they have more positive experiences when living among many other couples, but it is also possible that happily coupled people are more likely to move to such regions.”

The researchers tested this possibility by repeating their analysis using only individuals who still resided in the region where they grew up, which reduces the likelihood that migration explains the pattern. Future studies tracking people over time could provide better insight into whether moving or changing relationship status shifts life satisfaction. Scientists could also investigate whether specific mechanisms, such as tax, housing, or other policy advantages for couples, help explain why partnered people fare better in these environments.

The findings are also based solely on Great Britain. Testing these relationships in other countries could help researchers determine whether similar regional patterns exist in different cultural and institutional settings.

The study, “Ties That Bind, Places That Matter: The Life-Satisfaction Gap Between Partnered and Single Individuals Varies Across Regions,” was authored by Tita Gonzalez Avilés, Franz J. Neyer, Peter J. Rentfrow, and Tobias Ebert.