The link provided was rather vague, but the study referenced is Money, Sex, and Happiness: Working from there, I found this NY Times article that covered the study in more depth emphasis mine:. In their study, Mr. Happiness is notoriously difficult to define, and the surveys make no attempt to do so; the respondents simply record how happy they believe themselves to be on a sliding scale.
Furthermore, the economists compared the levels of happiness produced by a vigorous sex life with other activities whose economic values had been calculated in prior research, allowing them to impute, in dollars, how much happiness sex was worth. As they say, correlation is not causation. Taken from the abstract emphasis mine:. In Study 1, the association between sexual frequency and well-being is only significant for people in relationships.
In Studies 2 and 3, which included only people in relationships, sexual frequency had a curvilinear association with relationship satisfaction, and relationship satisfaction mediated the association between sexual frequency and well-being.
For people in relationships, sexual frequency is no longer significantly associated with well-being at a frequency greater than once a week. The first study also found that making more money does not mean more sex. Others have found that making more money past a certain point does not mean more happiness. Tricky stuff, this happiness thing. In any case, I wish you all a happy long weekend! So, the bottom line is: Of course having kids is usually a drain on your sex life and your money, but they also bring happiness to the mix.
So then are the happiest people those with kids who are getting it on about once a week and making money? That makes sense to me⦠i guess i need to work on the once a week thing! These studies would seem to have massive standard deviation issues, making them almost useless. That said, I find the stat very believable based on outliers.
