He’s Happier, She’s Less So
By David Leonhardt

Last year, a team of researchers added a novel twist to something known as a time-use survey. Instead of simply asking people what they had done over the course of their day, as pollsters have been doing since the 1960s, the researchers also asked how people felt during each activity. Were they happy? Interested? Tired? Stressed?

Not surprisingly, men and women often gave similar answers about what they liked to do (hanging out with friends) and didn’t like (paying bills). But there were also a number of activities that produced very different reactions from the two sexes — and one of them really stands out: Men apparently enjoy being with their parents, while women find time with their mom and dad to be slightly less pleasant than doing laundry.

Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist working with four psychologists on the time-use research team, figures that there is a simple explanation for the difference. For a woman, time with her parents often resembles work, whether it’s helping them pay bills or plan a family gathering. “For men, it tends to be sitting on the sofa and watching football with their dad,” said Mr. Krueger, who, when not crunching data, enjoys watching the New York Giants with his father.

This intriguing — if unsettling — finding is part of a larger story: there appears to be a growing happiness gap between men and women.

Two new research papers, using very different methods, have both come to this conclusion. Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, economists at the University of Pennsylvania (and a couple), have looked at the traditional happiness data, in which people are simply asked how satisfied they are with their overall lives. In the early 1970s, women reported being slightly happier than men. Today, the two have switched places.

Mr. Krueger, analyzing time-use studies over the last four decades, has found an even starker pattern. Since the 1960s, men have gradually cut back on activities they find unpleasant. They now work less and relax more.

Over the same span, women have replaced housework with paid work — and, as a result, are spending almost as much time doing things they don’t enjoy as in the past. Forty years ago, a typical woman spent about 23 hours a week in an activity considered unpleasant, or 40 more minutes than a typical man. Today, with men working less, the gap is 90 minutes.

These trends are reminiscent of the idea of “the second shift,” the name of a 1989 book by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild, arguing that modern women effectively had to hold down two jobs. The first shift was at the office, and the second at home.

But researchers who have looked at time-use data say the second-shift theory misses an important detail. Women are not actually working more than they were 30 or 40 years ago. They are instead doing different kinds of work. They’re spending more time on paid work and less on cleaning and cooking.

What has changed — and what seems to be the most likely explanation for the happiness trends — is that women now have a much longer to-do list than they once did (including helping their aging parents). They can’t possibly get it all done, and many end up feeling as if they are somehow falling short.

Mr. Krueger’s data, for instance, shows that the average time devoted to dusting has fallen significantly in recent decades. There haven’t been any dust-related technological breakthroughs, so houses are probably just dirtier than they used to be. I imagine that the new American dustiness affects women’s happiness more than men’s.

Ms. Stevenson was recently having drinks with a business school graduate who came up with a nice way of summarizing the problem. Her mother’s goals in life, the student said, were to have a beautiful garden, a well-kept house and well-adjusted children who did well in school. “I sort of want all those things, too,” the student said, as Ms. Stevenson recalled, “but I also want to have a great career and have an impact on the broader world.”

It’s telling that there is also a happiness gap between boys and girls in high school. As life has generally gotten better over the last generation — less crime, longer-living grandparents and much cooler gadgets — male high school seniors have gotten happier. About 25 percent say they are very satisfied with their lives, up from 16 percent in 1976. Roughly 22 percent of senior girls now give that answer, unchanged from the 1970s.

When Ms. Stevenson and I were talking last week about possible explanations, she mentioned her “hottie theory.” It’s based on an April article in this newspaper by Sara Rimer, about a group of incredibly impressive teenage girls in Newton, Mass. The girls were getting better grades than the boys, playing varsity sports, helping to run the student government and doing community service. Yet one girl who had gotten a perfect 2,400 on her college entrance exams noted that she and her friends still felt pressure to be “effortlessly hot.”

As Ms. Stevenson, who’s 36, said: “When I was in high school, it was clear being a hottie was the most important thing, and it’s not that it’s any less important today. It’s that other things have become more important. And, frankly, people spent a lot of time trying to be a hottie when I was in high school. So I don’t know where they find the time today.”

The two new papers — Mr. Krueger’s will be published in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity and the Stevenson-Wolfers one is still in draft form — are part of a burst of happiness research in recent years. There is no question that the research has its limitations. Happiness, of course, is highly subjective.

A big reason that women reported being happier three decades ago — despite far more discrimination — is probably that they had narrower ambitions, Ms. Stevenson says. Many compared themselves only to other women, rather than to men as well. This doesn’t mean they were better off back then.

But it does show just how incomplete the gender revolution has been. Although women have flooded into the work force, American society hasn’t fully come to grips with the change. The United States still doesn’t have universal preschool, and, in contrast to other industrialized countries, there is no guaranteed paid leave for new parents.

Government policy isn’t the only problem, either. Inside of families, men still haven’t figured out how to shoulder their fair share of the household burden. Instead, we’re spending more time on the phone and in front of the television.

This is a man's, a man's, a man's world...

No suprise women bring on a lit of **** them selves. If you spend less time worrying about what other girls think about you and more time worrying about your self you would be much happeir. Personally i dont give a **** if another girls likes me i dont spend my time worrying about it. Then again most of my friends are guys becase i am not one that likes the drama ******** that women bring along

^ SAME HERE!

I once heard that when a guy has sex with his wife when she's stressed, it makes her less stress. :x

It is so true sex is a good stress revealer

Sex this, Sex that....blah blah....there's better ways to love someone.

But this is soooo wrong. I'm not happy , I'm quite sad. So it's wrong. jk

^ i do agree to a point, by no means does my life revolve around it but on the other hand i dont see anything wrong with it when you are in a commited realtionship with someone. I thinking sleeping around is sleezy but when you are in a realtionship with someone that to me is ok

I heard about this in the news the other day

I disagree. So much.

well i knew that women lived more unhappier most men don't care about there figures as much as women un know... or simple things that women obsess about...OMG MY HAIR...OMG MY NAILS...OMG MY MAKEUP.... these thigns are the ones that cause it...IMO... i really don't know my friends always complain about those lol

amen chicka

I wouldn't know/never will, but oh well, it's overrated. :/

Because we men **** more

What a load of bloody ****.

They bring it on themselves? Are you ****ing joking? Why do you think billions of currency is spent every year or mass advertising and brain washing targeted at what women should be? So that they, as the secondary element, i.e. the consumer buy into the **** to please themselves and to please partners/potential partners and not to get the **** ripped out of them everytime they go outside or feel ****** when their partner think is oggling someone else. Image awareness, low self esteem and lack of self confidence as well as inflated self worth are prime for taking money and women are hugely susceptible to it because they have literally always been told what to do, what to like, dislike and to be, from children when they have stupid baby dolls and grooming kits to play with and boys actually get creative toys.

Women used to be expected to meet all the social and marital wants of them i.e. to be the 'ideal' woman as well as look after the domestic front, the husband, any kids and community obligations but because it was mainly unpaid work it was seen as unimportant. But do you know how much those jobs are worth when paid properly? Housekeepers get £60,000+pa and butlers (a predominantly male and hence better paid job) get £100,000+pa. Now, women may be allowed to do a lot more than they used to but gender roles haven't changed much, women still usually stay at home after having children even though they've just done the job of having the baby and men a lot less in the upbringing on the whole, then there are the huge amount of single mothers (which vastly overshadow the amount of single fathers) and women still do the majority of the domestic work and they still get paid approx 30% less than their male peers, and yet as usual the pressure to be the ideal attractive woman is still there, so of course they're ****ing stressed and less happy.

As for the women comparing themselves to other women, yes it's stupid and gullible, but it's hard when every bloody thing is doing that from the magazines to the tv adverts using womens bodies to advertising every unnecessary thing. Women also make up a minority of those in the top decision making tiers in industries which means that the portrayal of women and what they should be is mainly governed by men, from the glamourisation of prostitution to unrealistic categorisation of lesbianism to be used only for titilation or degrading remarks, to making stripping trendy and basically making 'attractive' women accessible to all men regardless of the consequences and believe me there are dire ****ing consequences especially in the sex industry due all this extra demand which people think they have a right to because it's everywhere.

It's also because so many pieces of **** can get girlfriends and wives that they don't bother to better themselves and the expectation of women is increasingly high. You only have to look at this forum which is male dominated to see all the venom and critique of women's looks, behaviour and attributes to see unrealistic and unfair expectation and the amount of 'bitching' (typically people feminise words/people/objects in order to put them down) that goes on which is exactly what women are accused of as if men don't do it too. So the pressure doesn't only come from women who are trying to make themselves look better than other women and/or to impress their male friends or potential partners.

There's also the problem that feminism has become a 'dirty' word - it's like a fad that's had it's day and people think of it with annoyance or 'they got the vote, they can shut up now'. People like that are blind to what's going on around them and many of them also seem to think that only women can be feminists. That's like saying that only people who suffer from race discrimination can be anti-racist or the same for age, disabilities, religious discrimination and every other issue. I've seen plenty of people on this board and in society think highly of themselves for being concerned about an issue or help raise awareness of it and then turn around and act ****** towards or about people who suffer from other types of discriminitation, so basically they're 'ethical' in one or more ways and not in others which is hypocritical because many of these issues share similar arguments, just a different or even crossover target group. For example, there are plenty of people on this board that only seem to care about what most affects/outrages them, that is mainly racism and homophobia on this board, and then those same people are chauvenistic and sexist about women, when quite frankly women make up half the population and hence suffer from the same discriminations added to the fact that they're women as well. But people always seem to need someone to feel superior to which is why women in regards to their colour will and have been put down by males of their own colour as well and why gay men get more serious coverage than lesbian women, lesbians aren't even generally call lesbians, they're called gay. It's all of these half baked 'ethical' hypocrisy that helps add to the pressure.

As for the movement of 'pressure' on men to look better just in case anyone thinks that's a valid counter, it's no way near as bad or as compulsory as it is for women. The metrosexual movement has thankfully not got past the superficial marketing stage, men can still go out with their natural body hair without getting publically humiliated, the media isn't doesn't pay as much attention to what male celebs wear, they aren't told that this year even colour is in and next year shades is better or straight is this season, curly is next which such a force that it makes you a target if you don't follow it, practically every image decision is made with a range of limited options per season from nail colour to length and shape of nail to cut of trousers and when highlights are in and what shades or texture of make up should be bought to what shades and fabrics should be worn in order to be 'hot' or 'cool'. Even in sports, for the women that manage to stay in sports past their early teens, their is a pressure to look good because mass idiotry associates muscular development with masculinity.

This is a huge issue, like all of the others and deserves to be properly thought out but I don't have time right now to go further so to cut it off there and say that basically the demand and expectation of women is huge, it always has been and still is, the empowerment and equality of opportunity of women has been twisted so that instead of their fair share women are still doing more work whilst the media spreads the word that flaunting yourself is the way to go and getting females to buy into it and put down other women to make themselves look better is the way forward. Society as a whole is to blame, men and women perpetuate it but on the whole women still get the blame for it (from affairs to marriages of convenience, to prostitution - who really benefits from that? Pimps and customers, not the minority of women who do it for 'fun' like the media and associated industries focus on - to rape), use your heads and look past it, spread your 'ethical' concern further.

LFRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

:x

omfggg thats longer than the article itself O,O, Adora <333.

Why do you think that is? They are simple things but such a huge fuss is made over them, have you noticed what people on this board alone say about pics of women who don't get one of those 'simple' things right in their opinion? It's also not just image that women worry about, although it's a huge money making and controlling industry from beauty products to diet products - women have the same things that men worry about e.g finance and health but they carry a greater share of the burden and they have the huge image expectation of them.

Are you laughing at me?

Eddie - that article barely touches the surface and if you know anything about me on this board it's that I care vociferously about victims in all issues.

Not in a negative way, but that was sooooo much to read.