The Origins of Happiness

Chapter 5

In earlier times few people “lived as married”: they just

got married. But in the last fifty years cohabitation has be-

come more and more common, and in Britain a third of

children are now born to an unmarried couple who live

together.^1 So, from a functional point of view, the first two

groups are so similar that we merge them into a single

group that we call “partnered.”

Similarly, there is no massive difference between being

separated and legally divorced, and we combine these two

under the generic heading “separated.” Separation can occur

at any age. But widowhood becomes increasingly common

with age, and in this chapter we therefore include adults of

all ages. The division of the British population between the

different categories is as shown in Figure 5.1.

How much difference does it make whether you are

single (our omitted category), partnered, separated, or wid-

owed? We can look at this first using the data from the BCS

(see Table 5.1).

Pe

rcen

t

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Widowed

Separated

Partnered

Single

20–2526–3031–3536–4041–4546–5051–5556–6061–6566–7071–7576–80

80+

Figure 5.1. Family status by age in Britain (UKHLS, 2010– 15)