Want to be Happy?

Survey links happiness to marriage, children, church
Scripps Howard

The keys to happiness are simple — grow up, get married, have children, go to church and try to forget about the wilder days of youth.

Only 52 percent of Americans say they are "very happy" with their lives, according to a Scripps Howard/Ohio University survey of 1,007 adult residents of the United States. Forty-three percent said they are "fairly happy," 3 percent said they are "not too happy" and 2 percent are undecided.

That might not seem sufficiently ebullient for a nation that embraces the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right. But the survey found Americans with particular lifestyles more likely to say they have found contentment. While wealth has a modest impact on well-being, other social factors appear to have greater influence.

"It's a lot of fun to see what the correlations are for happiness," said Glenn Van Ekeren, an elder-care executive in Omaha, Neb., who has published three books on the secrets to happiness.

One of the most important things Americans can do to improve the odds of being happy, the survey found, is to get married. Sixty percent of married people are very happy, compared with 41 percent of singles, the poll found.

Most people who have children said they are very happy in life, while most people who had never been parents said they are only "fairly happy" or "not too happy." Even among single people, having children in their lives increased the odds they will be happy.

An even stronger factor is the power of organized religion — any religion — on a sense of well-being.

Although their numbers were small, Jewish participants in the poll were the most likely of any group to say they are very happy. Protestants — especially self-identified "born again" evangelicals — also reported a high rate of contentment.

Sixty percent of people who had recently attended worship services said they are very happy, compared with 46 percent who had not done so.