By Anne Bromley, University of Virgina, Aug 18, 2015 – Republican men and women are more likely than Democrats to say they are “very happy” in their marriages, according to a new report co-authored by University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox.
The findings, released Monday from the Institute for Family Studies, challenge other studies and assumptions about family life and partisanship arguing that blue families are stronger and more stable.
Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at U.Va. and a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, and Nicholas H. Wolfinger, a sociologist at the University of Utah, analyzed data from the 2010-14 General Social Survey of men and women between 20 and 60 years of age. The study found that 67 percent of married Republicans reported being happy in their marriages, compared to 60 percent of married Democratic spouses (and independents).
Two previous reports from the Institute of Family Studies looked at the preponderance of marriage in red and blue states and a sample of 468 of the largest counties within states.
