What Makes Women Happy?

With Valentine’s Day less than a month away many people are asking "what makes women happy?" And as many often find out, there is no easy answer. In fact, it is probably becoming harder to make women happy.

Although women’s lives in the United States have improved by most objective measures (such as, female income and labor force participation), when asked if they are happy, a smaller percentage of women now answers "yes" when compared to women in the 1970s. This result is presented in “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness” by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of Wharton. The authors also find that women are on average happier than men, but they are becoming less happy over time relative to men.

It’s not all bad news. In Europe, women have on average become happier over the past 30 years. Although, women’s relative happiness has decreased when compared to men. That is, men’s increase in happiness was larger than women’s increase over this period. When the authors analyze the data for 86 countries across the world, they find a weak evidence that women have actually become happier over the past 20 years.

Can increasing women’s opportunities be the path to female happiness? I argue that the answer is yes, contrary to the results presented for the United States. For instance, in Niger only 10% of firms have female participation in ownership and only 3% of senior positions are occupied by women (data from Enterprise Surveys). I suspect more business opportunities for women can increase the happiness and well-being of women in Niger.

We still do not know what makes women happy, but discrimination, exclusion from labor markets and business prospects probably do not make women happier.