Transcription
How many times have we heard women make statements or post videos like this? She said, "What's your secret? You look amazing." And I said, "I got divorced and I found my happy." And she just laughed and said, "Congratulations." Every single divorced woman that I know is happier now than when she was married. It doesn't matter if she's 60, if she's 20, if she has kids, if she had to go back to school, if she had to go back to work. Every single one of them looks better, feels better, acts better, and appears to be thriving. On the flip side, the majority of their husbands are not doing well. But what we don't know is how long after divorce this was. Or the level of increased happiness that they supposedly experience. Or even how long that supposed happiness lasts post divorce.
And then we have women on TikTok saying things like this. "Just read an article about why women are happier after divorce and I wanted to share." >> I'll show a bit more of her video here in just a moment for more context. She did not expect anyone to look into that study or to report what she's actually talking about. But I did. Because that's what I do. I call out BS research and how people misuse studies to grift. So here's what I want to do in today's video. Let's have a look at what she's actually referring to and then dissect the real study and its results. Then expose men's and women's reported life satisfaction before and after marriage and divorce. And then I want to talk about why we can't generalize the study's results to these women's viewers. So let's set this up with a bit more from that woman's video and tell me what you notice. "Just read an article about why women are happier after divorce and I wanted to share." This was based on a study by Kingston University. They surveyed 10,000 people between the ages of 16 and 60. Participants were asked to rate their happiness before and after divorce. They found that women were happier and more satisfied with their lives after divorce. So why is this? It said that women are more likely than men to seek help for the emotional trauma caused by divorce. Not reaching out for support prolongs your suffering. It also mentions that women are more likely than men to surround themselves with a positive support system. PS, if you're a woman who needs a support system, come join my private support group. Make sure you're getting support, prioritizing your needs, surrounding yourself with a good support system, and doing things to fulfill yourself.
Hopefully you noticed that she's talking about a single study. She did not source that study. And she's using it to grift post marriage support. In fact, what she's referring to does not even discuss women's support during or after divorce. It doesn't measure or analyze any of that. In fact, the authors of what we're about to to review report that it's not even possible to distinguish mechanisms like that with the data that they collected. So the viral claim like this woman tries to make is that women report higher happiness after divorce. And this is where she got it. What she's referring to comes from this. It comes from Science News Science Daily online with a headline that "Divorce can spell big boost to women's happiness, UK research shows." And this is from July 2013, 12 years ago. And in fact, what we're looking at right here is not a research article. It's a press release about upcoming research or research that has recently been published. You can see here, "Your source for the latest research news." And I'm sure you can imagine that that heading is a very big claim and absolutely overstating the actual findings from the study, which we're actually going to look at in just a moment. Again, as I mentioned, this is simply a press release about information study that that's coming out. And we can see a quote in that promotional material from one of the authors in which he states, "In the study, we took into account the fact that divorce can sometimes have a negative financial impact on women, but despite that, it still makes them much happier than men." Which we're going to have a look at for in just a moment. And I absolutely disagree based on their own findings.
So here's what the actual study really is. And it took me a little while to find this because at first all I could find was that little press release type thing. It took me a while to find this. I will leave a link for it in a pinned comment and in the description so you can download it and have a look at it for yourself as well. In fact, here is the full article with the this woman obviously did not read. You can see here's the authors and the title. And with actually a publication date of March 12, I'm sorry, of March 2012. So that press release part that we just looked at a moment ago was written a year after the actual article was published itself. So you can go ahead and we can have a scroll through here. Again, this is the full article that includes way down at the bottom all of the tables and charts that we'll have a look at here in just a moment. But this is the full article, which the woman obviously did not read in its entirety.
So the study did in fact come from Kingston University as the woman said. You can see the authors right here, Andrew Clark and Yannis Georgellis, I believe you would say that, in the research journal Economica. It's a British study. The the data come from the British household panel survey. They did in fact sample about 10,000 people as this woman had said in her video, with an age age range, she was accurate about that, of 16 to 60 years old. And data were collected over a 20-year period. So it was a longitudinal tracking study. Now that's important because it's not just a one-time study. It does give some cred- credibility some credibility to it and its methodology. So here what we want to focus on is that participants were repeatedly asked over time to rate a couple of things. Their life satisfaction and their quality of life two separate things. And they were they collected results and reported those life satisfaction and quality of life before and after major life events such as marriage and divorce, both of which we'll have a look at in a moment. They also include the other things like employment, widowhood, and having having a child, too. So if you're interested in those parts of the study, go ahead download a copy from its original source from that link that I'll leave. So they had did all of this so that they could track within person changes over time and not just group averages or group comparisons. It's a a very detailed long-term study.
But here's what we want to focus on. The study uses as I mentioned two different ways to measure well-being and they capture different things. First, there's a single life satisfaction question. It's just one question where people rated how satisfied they were with their lives overall on a scale of one to seven. And they would be asked this question many times over a several year up to two decade period. Now that's more of a broad reflective judgment. So it includes how people interpret their situations at that given time and the story that they tell themselves about their lives. And the second one, and I think this one is even more important, much more important in fact. Here the second one is the general health questionnaire 12. It's a 12 item measure. It's validated psychom- psychometrically and it's made up of multiple questions about things like stress, anxiety, mood, and daily functioning. Now that one is far less about how life appears or is interpreted on paper and more about how people are actually feeling and coping day-to-day. Right, so those are the two measures of interest. And before we take a look at the graphs here, let me just say that what we're looking here at here is comparing baseline results over time. So think of baseline as essentially people's normal level of well-being. And the charts again that we'll look at here in just a moment will show how much better or worse people feel compared to their usual or their normal selves at different points in time. So with that in mind, let's look at several graphs from the original study and I'll put up on screen these images as we go.
So the first one that we'll look at is women reporting on that one item question about life satisfaction before, during, and and after marriage. And as we can see, women typically start a little bit above their baseline on life satisfaction. And then the three, two, one zero years leading up to their marriage, their life satisfaction increases. And then immediately starts to decrease after years one, two, three, four, and five. So you can see from that one item, women's life satisfaction is decreasing after marriage. I know a lot of you, especially your women, are going to say, "I knew it." Stick with me. Now let's look at that same one, women responding to the 12 item measure and how it relates to marriage over time. And what we can see here is that it is somewhat similar, although this one shows a bit of a dip the three years prior to marriage. Higher, increasing, increasing up to the year of marriage and then again decreasing for one, two, three, four years and then stable for years three to five.
And now let's have a look at men's response to that one life satisfaction question leading up to, during, and after marriage. And we can see that it follows a similar pattern here to with with women in that it slowly increases up to and including year zero, the year of their marriage, and then decreasing slightly. Including years 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. [snorts] We're going to have a look at men and women side by side here in just a moment, okay? But now let's look at men and their responses to that 12-item measure. And we can see somewhat similar here and that it steadily increases up to and including the year of marriage, decreases but then for some reason increases a little bit at year four. Not sure what that's all about, but then it continues to decrease again. What we can see is for both men and women leading up to their marriage year on both the well-being and the quality of I'm sorry, the life satisfaction measure. They're both increasing a little bit up until the year of marriage and then decreasing. Let me put them side by side here and give you just a moment to have a look at them and give me anything any comments that you can notice between the men and the women and the two different measures. I think for me one of the main takeaways here is that overall marriage appears to provide a short-term boost for both men and women with women showing a slightly stronger effect. But neither one of those sexes showing a last long-lasting or long-term gain in well-being. Very similar.
Now let's have a look at divorce on those two measures for women. And women's reports on the life satisfaction, remember this is the one item measure here. This is where a lot of the women are going to want to take their information from I'm just I think and to report it as definitive end-all be-all. What we can see is that the four years leading up to divorce, women's baseline for life satisfaction is I'm sorry, their their scores are below their baseline. When the divorce happens, they are very near their baseline and then it continues to increase their life satisfaction for 1, 2, 3, 4 and then flattens out at at about year five. So when we look at just this one right here, women responding to just this one question in this in this one one item, we can see that this is probably where the information for that heading that we saw in that in that press release just a moment ago is coming from. When we do however look at the larger 12-item measure, the well-being measure, what we see is something almost entirely different. Early on, yes, women still showing scores of their um their quality of life below baseline for the four or so years leading up to divorce and then at the year of divorce increasing for 1, 2, 3 years and then after year three declining. In fact, what we can see is that even at year three is when they finally get over their baseline and their well-being is better than normal. It takes them three years to get there and then when they do, it decreases substantially.
Now let's have a look at the same thing for men. Men's responses to the single-item life satisfaction item regarding divorce. And what we can see here is that men's scores on this one item are below their baseline before their normal below their normal or typical life satisfaction for the four or so years leading up to the divorce then it increases. They reach baseline at about year two, decreases a little bit and then goes back up. When we look at men's responses to the 12-item questionnaire for well-being, this one is very interesting, I think. We again see that they are below baseline for the several years leading up to divorce and then immediately years 1, 2 and 3 are above baseline so men's quality of life, men's well-being increases substantially to well over baseline in during year one remains relatively steady for years two, three. They somehow I don't I can't explain this, they dip below baseline a little bit for for for year four and then right back up over baseline again for year five.
Now let's look at these side by side. When we look at the one-item measure for life satisfaction side by side relative to to divorce, when we put men and women side by side here, we can see it's relatively similar, right? So again, women more more flat, I'd say, in the several years leading up to divorce. Men increasing, women increasing as well. Women getting over their baseline at uh right about year one, increasing for years two and three. Men not quite reaching their baseline like women are. Again, remember that's just the one-item measure. When we look at the larger, more accurate 12-item measure of well-being, this is where the story really is. We can see that again, leading up to divorce, men and women both reporting below their baseline, men shooting up more much more quickly than women, stable there for a few years, they dip below baseline year four and then right straight back up to above baseline on year five, whereas women are making more of an arch. So their overall well-being is increasing for years 1, 2 and 3 and then steadily starts to decrease after year three. So down down on years four and five.
And I think this is really interesting, really telling because as I mentioned when we looked at those videos at the beginning here, "I got divorced and I found my happy." And she just laughed and said, "Congratulations." Every single divorced woman that I know is happier now. On the flip side, the majority of their husbands are not doing well. Those women said that they were happy, it's the best thing they'd ever done. Not telling them that yes, you can live with that euphoria or experience that that high for a couple of years, but you're going to go right back down to baseline and you're going to just feel just like you did any any other time. It's a short-lived two or three-year period in which they will experience what they perceive to be a better life.
All right, so I hope that my explanation, my breakdown did well enough for you. Of course, go back and pause and have a closer look at them just for a little bit more of your own interpretation. But here's a few things that I wanted to cover as well. This study often gets presented as divorce making women happier, right? And that's exactly what we saw in that press release and what the woman on TikTok said. ">> I read an article about why women are happier after divorce and I wanted to share. This was based on a study by Kingston University. They surveyed 10,000 people between the ages of 16 and 60. Participants were asked to rate their happiness before and after divorce. They found that women were happier and more satisfied with their lives after divorce. So why is this? It said women are more likely than men to seek help for the emotional trauma caused by divorce. Not reaching out for support prolongs your suffering. It also mentions that women are more likely than men to surround themselves with a positive support system. PS, if you're a woman who needs a support system, come join my private support group." I read the study. First of all, no you didn't read the study. And then this is what it says. No, it doesn't say that. And then she wants to sell products or her services based on this study that she didn't read saying that support helps women to get past those when no, the study doesn't say that at all.
So what this actually shows is more much more nuanced. It's relative to people's own averages, right? So we're talking about those baselines over a full 20-year window, right? So the averages include the decline leading to divorce. Think of the baseline again as averages across an entire 20-year data set including leading up to and immediately after other events, right? So we don't even have any contextualization how other things are affecting this as well. As I mentioned, having children, unemployment as well, right? So those things are not even factored collectively in what we just looked at. So overall, it doesn't necessarily mean higher than early marriage happiness. In fact, it's all temporary as we saw, maybe up to five years, but more likely a two-to-three-to-four-year increase in life satisfaction reports or the well-being reports and then things come back down to baseline or below baseline. And this study is often cited because it's one of the few studies that actually show a temporary post-divorce increase above people's baseline. Oh, and another thing that I almost forgot to mention is that when women are reporting how happy they are after their marriage I'm sorry, after their divorce, many times what they are reporting, especially in that first year or so, is they are comparing themselves to that one or two-year period leading up to the divorce in which maybe their life satisfaction or their well-being was at its lowest. They're not comparing it to their life satisfaction or their well-being from five years ago or 10 years ago. But just like this study, many others have reported that yes, there is that decline and then the recovery and then the return to baseline not actually getting above it. This is one of the very few studies that actually reports that there can be an actual recovery and going above baseline in the year or two following divorce. So in that regard, this one's this study is unique and that's why a lot of people I think like to report on it.
So our clean takeaway is that the Kingston University study did not just find that women recover after divorce. It found that on average they report a temporary increase in life satisfaction above their usual level for several years. But that increase is relative to a long-term average that includes the decline leading up to divorce as I mentioned. And it tends to fade over time rather than representing a permanent improvement. Things always come back to baseline.
So, let me tell you what this study does generalize fairly well. The shape of these trajectories is fairly consistent across many different countries. That is the decline before divorce, lowest at the the time of divorce, and then recovery after, and movement then back down to baseline. That's pretty fairly common. And this shows up in studies that have been done in the UK as we can see here, as well as Germany, Australia, and the United States. But here's what we cannot generalize from this study. The UK study suggests a noticeable boost post-divorce uh increase for both men and women. But, for example, women in the United States experience larger income drops for women post-divorce because they have less safe uh social safety nets. So, they are more likely to, I would say, experience even smaller increases in their well-being or life satisfaction because they don't have all of those social safety nets. Whereas in the UK, there's more welfare buffering. Those are things like housing benefits and healthcare access. And since financial strain strongly predicts well-being, US women are more likely to expe- experience prolonged stress and they maybe even at higher levels. In the United States, childcare costs and work structures are much more demanding. So, post-divorce stress may again, because of these, be higher in the US in in those contexts. But, so that's why I say we cannot generalize this UK study to these women promoting the that information in US markets or other countries is simply because of a lot of economic reasons and political reasons and social reasons. We just cannot generalize pre- and post-divorce outcomes.
So, what we saw from those women in those videos that I showed earlier really lines up much more with short-term emotional framing than with what the research actually shows. In the study that this woman referenced and that we just dissected, both men and women experience a drop in well-being leading up to divorce and a recovery afterward. In fact, with I think the most meaningful one showing men recovering much more quickly and with much better results. And most of that improvement reflecting a return to their normal baseline rather than a lasting increase in happiness. And that word goes for both men and women. They are both eventually come back down to their baseline. But when information in videos like that get circulated, it's all translated into social media content and it becomes a much more appealing narrative for women. And that narrative is that divorce is a clear path to having a better life. And then if we add in personal testimonies from women who are right at that early post-divorce uh stage when relief and optimism are highest and they're getting validation and they're getting all of the support from everybody around them, it creates a powerful but incomplete picture that feels like evidence even though it's really just a snapshot in time. It doesn't last long. And when those messages are repeated across videos and across other platforms and even support communities and services that are being marketed to women, it functions far less like information and more like cultural reinforcement. Collectively, that combination of oversimplified study claims, emotionally charged personal stories, and group validation can make divorce seem like a broadly beneficial move rather than a complex, high-risk life transition with very mixed outcomes. All of this shaping expectations and decision-making, especially for women who are already dissatisfied and expect things to be better for the rest of their lives. But the data just don't support it. They don't bear that out. So, the result is not just individual choices, it's a broader narrative, as I mentioned, that can normalize leaving marriages based on partial evidence and short-term experiences. Well, at the same town at the same time, downplaying the longer-term realities that the research actually points to.
So, let me know what you think, guys. And if you want to more research breakdowns like this, check out one of these videos. Cheers, and I'll see you soon.