"The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness."

"By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women's declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging — one with higher subjective well-being for men."

Synopsis of a paper by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, linked by Ross Douthat, who says:

It’s true that for all its socioeconomic costs, the decline of marriage hasn’t led to immiseration and upheaval on a grand scale. But at the very least, it’s been associated with a growing happiness gap between the well-educated and the poor... and a decline in female happiness overall. Which suggests that even if we bracket the interests of children entirely and just focus on parents, there’s a strong case that both sexes would be better off if working-class women demanded more of the men in their lives and working-class men demanded more of themselves.