A new study examining more than 380,000 adults across Great Britain finds that the life-satisfaction gap between people in romantic relationships and those who are single varies by where people live. The gap is wider in areas where romantic partnerships are more common, the researchers report, because partnered individuals tend to rate their life satisfaction higher in those districts.
In social psychology, the term life satisfaction refers to how positively or fulfilment of one’s overall life circumstances is perceived. The study also touches on the concept of person-culture match, the idea that wellbeing can rise when an individual’s traits and lifestyle align with local norms. While the general pattern shows couples report higher life satisfaction than singles, the researchers say the regional context matters and cannot fully explain the gap.
Past work has suggested the size of the happiness gap between partnered and single people differs by country or state, and some analyses have tied marriage more strongly to life satisfaction in places with higher marriage rates. Other studies have not found strong links between family values and wellbeing gaps, highlighting the complexity of the issue. The current research seeks to link these strands by asking whether local relationship rates shape how singles and couples fare in terms of life satisfaction.
Lead author Tita Gonzalez Avilés, from the Institute of Psychology at the University of Bamberg, explained: “Many studies find that partnered people are happier than single people and such findings often read as evidence that romantic relationships are good for us. But the reasons behind this life satisfaction gap are not entirely clear. We wanted to shift the focus from the relationship itself to the regional contexts in which partnered and single people’s lives unfold.”
The researchers reasoned that in areas with high relationship prevalence, couples might feel more supported and aligned with local norms around partnership, while single individuals could experience greater social pressure or exclusion in those surrounding communities.
To test the idea, the team analysed data from the BBC Big Personality Test, involving 382,078 adults living in 379 local authority districts. Participants answered whether they were currently in an intimate relationship and rated their life satisfaction on a seven-point scale.
Regional relationship rates were calculated as the share of participants reporting a relationship in each district. The districts ranged from about 55 per cent in one London borough to 80 per cent in Bolsover. The researchers controlled for a wide array of individual characteristics—age, gender, education, employment, income, health and personality traits—as well as district-level factors such as population density, median income, birth rates, median age, political leanings and religious affiliation.
Across Britain as a whole, partnered individuals reported higher life satisfaction than singles, with the difference about half a standard deviation. The authors note this magnitude is comparable to differences associated with employment status or health, and aligns with earlier PsyPost coverage of related findings.
Looking across regions, the gap varied with the local relationship rate. In districts with the lowest relationship rates, the gap was 0.49 standard deviations; in districts with the highest rates, it widened to 0.63 standard deviations, a rise of nearly 29 per cent. The increase was driven mainly by higher life satisfaction among partnered residents in high-relationship districts, while singles’ satisfaction remained relatively constant.
The regional pattern held under several robustness checks. Using official census marriage and cohabitation rates instead of survey-derived measures, applying broader regional controls, and imposing stricter minimum district sample sizes did not change the overall pattern.
In additional exploratory analyses, the researchers found that the gap was larger in districts with lower median incomes, a higher share of Leave votes in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and more residents reporting a religious affiliation. In more politically conservative and religious districts, the widening gap primarily reflected lower life satisfaction among singles. The researchers stress that these explanations are speculative and not directly tested in the study.
Gonzalez Avilés commented: “We expected single people to be less satisfied where many others are partnered but found no evidence for this. What seemed to be more important for the single people was not how many people are partnered but the prevailing regional attitudes toward singlehood (i.e., single people being less satisfied in more conservative and religious regions).” She added that “regional relationship norms and societal expectations can affect how partnered and single people evaluate their own life.”
In an additional neighbourhood-scale analysis covering 52,836 participants in 218 London postal districts, the gap widened with higher local relationship rates. Districts with the lowest relationship rates showed a 0.41 standard deviation gap, compared with 0.62 in districts with the highest rates—an increase of around 51 per cent—an effect largely driven by greater satisfaction among couples in areas where relationships were common.
The researchers also asked whether people in high-relationship areas placed more importance on being in a relationship. They found no evidence that couples or singles valued partnership more in these regions; in fact, singles in high-relationship areas placed slightly less importance on being partnered, which the authors speculate could reflect singles shifting focus to other life goals.
Several caveats accompany the findings. The sample consisted of online volunteers who took the personality test between 2009 and 2011, with roughly 64 per cent of respondents identifying as women. The data are more than 15 years old, though the authors note that regional marriage rates in the survey closely mirrored the 2011 census, lending some support to the geographic estimates.
Because the study is correlational, it cannot establish causation. Happier couples might simply move to regions where relationships are more prevalent, or such areas could confer advantages to couples that are not available to singles. The authors tested a restrictive approach, re-running analyses only on individuals who remained in the region where they grew up, to reduce the likelihood that migration explains the pattern. They emphasise that future longitudinal work could better illuminate whether moving or changing relationship status drives life satisfaction and whether specific mechanisms—such as tax, housing or policy support for couples—play a role.
The study, “Ties That Bind, Places That Matter: The Life-Satisfaction Gap Between Partnered and Single Individuals Varies Across Regions,” is authored by Tita Gonzalez Avilés, Franz J. Neyer, Peter J. Rentfrow and Tobias Ebert and focuses solely on Great Britain. The researchers note that testing similar regional dynamics in other countries would help determine whether the pattern holds in different cultural and institutional settings.
