Gender, Marital Status and Life Satisfaction

*This paper uses materials from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study from 2006-2014 to study the relationship of gender and marital status to life satisfaction. In an analysis of 103,217 respondents from 81 nations I find that while there do not seem to be main effects of gender on life satisfaction – that is, women are no more or less satisfied with their lives than are men -- gender moderates the effects of geographical region, age, employment status, education, religious affiliation, and attendance of religious services on life satisfaction. In particular, there are substantial differences in the effects of marital status on life satisfaction by gender. The gender differences in most effects are so substantial that I argue that it makes no sense to analyze life satisfaction data without performing separate analyses by gender.