I'm surprised that greater wealth doesn't buy more sexual partners... Obviously, Hugh Hefner was not one of the survey participants.

I wonder if they inquired about, (and, if so, if they received honest answers regarding), extra-marital partners. That might have skewed the calculations for the "happiness maximiz[ation] number" of sexual partners.
Also, the effect of wealth on number of sex partners.

Married people were found to have more sex, and other studies have found that married couples are generally happier than single people, even if they rate their sex lives as poor.
Therefore, I would assume that the reason that the happiest people had only one (reported) sex partner was because they were married, or in long-term relationships.

They needed a study?

Michael - I suspect there's no more reliable route to unhappiness than an extra-marital affair.

oj - Hard to justify a salary if you don't do studies, isn't it?

Kind of shakes the modern dogma that traditional morality was devised by grumpy patriarchs for the express purpose of taking the fun out of life.

But, as Michael illustrates, there would still be a lot of squirming to get out of this conclusion because when modern folks talk about the pursuit of happiness, they often really mean the quest for thrills. In modern times, familiarity and unhappiness are becoming synonymous.

Academese. Gotta love it.

At some point on the road to adulthood I learned that money was far harder to obtain and retain than sex, and that there was no surer way to destroy your estate than to divorce.

"I'm surprised that greater wealth doesn't buy more sexual partners... Obviously, Hugh Hefner was not one of the survey participants."

The conclusion doesn't follow from the data. If the studies show that wealth doesn't correlate to the number of partners, it doesn't (necessarily) follow that this was due to a failure of wealth status to attract more potential partners. The statement assumes that wealthy people would naturally use their wealth to buy as many partners as possible.

Other studies have shown that married men are wealthier, on average, than single men. It appears that monogamy promotes wealth accumulation. The pursuit of additional sex partners destroys monogamy, and therefore the wealth-promoting benefits of it.

Besides, it does not require wealth to buy sex partners. Prostitution, like any other vice, is well within the budget of the average man, and like the other vices (gampling, drinking) are practiced more by those on the lower rungs of economic status.

The study doesn't seem to rule out serial monogamy, it just points out that changeover can be messy.

And, in fact, serial monogamy is the accepted status quo in American society.

Any man in the upper two wealth quintiles in America need not seek prostitutes, although some do; Plenty of semi-pros will come to him.

pj:

Long-term, that's probably true, but this is a snapshot look at happiness... Many people having affairs are much happier, for a time.

I'm reclined to trust this result.

Robert:

Unless women choose mates utterly at random, it is unlikely the population of single men will be identical to married men.

In other words, married men become that way becuase of characteristics women prefer, which incline the married male population to the outcomes you listed.

I think the technical term for it is "range restriction error."

Jeff, if women don't choose men at random, then the range is awfully broad. I continue to be amazed at the horrendous choices for mates many women make nowadays. I'd say that range restriction operates now on men, in that it is only the men who want the married life that get married. I think that there are far more women who want to settle down than there are men who will oblige them.

I married rather young for my generation, at 24 (I'm now 46). My now 26 year old niece called me an oddball. After I feigned offense at this remark, she said that she meant that in a good way, since she hasn't met any men her age that would even consider marriage.

Robert:

I hope you always remember that when I call you an oddball, heathen or idiot, I too mean it in a good way.

It is well established that American men who divorce almost always remarry, and ususally within about 3 years.

So it's pretty obvious, without taking a survey, that men who marry at all like marriage and are happier married than unmarried.

Harry:

I remember a study that showed that about 70% of all divorces were initiated by women, but that far more women than men subsequently regretted their divorces.

There's a survey out this week saying that women initiate 2/3ds of divorces in long marriages.

The person who files the legal papers for a divorce is often not the 'initiator.'

I'd be surprised about regretting divorce. I know lots of divorced women, and if any of them regret divorcing (as opposed to regretting having married the bum in the first place), they're hiding it very well.

There's a bad connotation to heathen??

Robert:

You are right, the range is broad. But everytime you see statistics cited showing how much marriage helps men, remember that women, given a choice, a somewhat less likely to marry an alchoholic or drug addict.

I'm still looking for the downside to heathenhood. Unsuccessfully, so far.

I just read the Working Paper and the authors falsely claim to be the first to look at the relationship between sex and happiness. They say that Laumann's classic study did not do so, but it did (pp. 357-63). Prof. Blanchflower's study mines the same area as Laumann's and does not explain why they find some different results because they did not read Laumann carefully enough to realize that they were not the first to look at this issue.

They should download Laumann's data from ICPSR and see why they get different results, not just plow ahead as if they are the first.