The Rise of Single People

With marriage under siege it should come as no surprise that there are more single people. From Psychology Today:

You might think, intuitively, that the single people who are most likely to feel lonely are the ones who are living alone. But if you compare people who live alone to people who live with others, making sure that the two groups are similar to each other in important ways, such as how much money they have, the results are startling: It is the people who live alone who are less likely to be lonely. Maybe that’s because they make more of an effort to get out of the house and to stay connected to the people who matter to them.

What about the claim that all this freedom-seeking is making people miserable? For that, I can tell you about a study of more than 200,000 people from 31 European nations. They were all asked how much they valued things like being free, being creative, and trying new things. They were also asked about their happiness. (Read more.)