Marriage makes people happier if they earn less than $60,000: Study

A study conducted by researchers at Georgia State University is the first to investigate how socioeconomic status influences the well-being of a marriage.

Couples who earn less than $60,000 were found to have fewer symptoms of depression and seem happier than people who are unmarried, the Daily Mail reported. However, there was not big effect in those married couples that earn more than $60,000 annually.

For the study, the team studied data from the Americans' Changing Lives Survey, which is a compilation of interviews of close to 3,500 people between the ages of 24 and 89. It covers a range of topics like physical and mental health and sociological.

"We looked at the interrelationships between marriage, income and depression, and what we found is that the benefit of marriage on depression is really for people with average or lower levels of income," Dr Kail, assistant professor of sociology at Georgia State, told the Daily Mail. Adding, "Specifically, people who are married and earning less than $60,000 a year in total household income experience fewer symptoms of depression."

"But above that, marriage is not associated with the same kind of reduction in symptoms of depression," Dr Kail went on to explain.

Combining income can have a positive impact on people who may sometimes have financial issues, researchers suggest.

The study was originally published in the journal Social Science Research.