Major life events can make you really happy or extremely sad well after they happen

Everybody wants to be happy but research shows that it's the big moments of our lives, or lack thereof, that can have some of the most impacts on our happiness as we move through the various stages of life.

The best and worst moments of your life have the power to reshape both your happiness and life satisfaction. But which key experiences have the biggest impact on your overall happiness? That’s a question that a group of researchers think that they have answered. 

A study published in the European Journal of Personality in February 2024 looked at how key events in life like marriage, childbirth, and the loss of a loved one shape our levels of happiness. The results were very surprising. 

Photo by One Zone Studio on Unsplash

PsyPost noted in its review of the study that previous research into the subject has had one big problem: it was often compartmentalized into the analysis of just one life event rather than key experiences as a whole. 

Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash

Life doesn’t happen in a vacuum and every important major experience is influenced by those that came before it, which is why the 2024 study was so interesting. It examined how life events affected happiness in their proper context and measured up against everything else happening in a person's lifetime.

Photo by lucas wesney on Unsplash

Few other studies have tackled such a goal, and to accomplish this study’s mission, its researchers used data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, a data set that began back in 1984 and ran until 2020, gathering a vast array of information. 

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Questions about everything from one’s employment and health status to education and life satisfaction allowed the researchers to track changes over time and in the lives of over 40,000 individuals and their life experiences.

Photo by Johny Georgiadis on Unsplash

What the study’s authors learned was rather unsurprising when it came to positive life events and life satisfaction but there were also many surprises in the data. Here’s the list of which life events had the biggest impacts. 

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Finding a new romantic partner had big post-event increases in life satisfaction and it was discovered that these impacts had long-lasting effects beyond three years of the first and second incident of the event. 

Photo by Jonathan J. Castellon on Unsplash

After one year of cohabitation, people saw gains in their life satisfaction. “The positive effects persisted for men for the first and second occurrences and for women for the third occurrence, indicating long-lasting effects, the researchers wrote. 

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Getting married for the first time had a significant impact on life satisfaction long before the marriage even began according to the research, and the satisfaction peaked after a year of marriage. But not every life event is a good one. 

Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash

Separation from a partner was linked to decreases in life satisfaction for both men and women. The effects of separation on life satisfaction were worse after the first event but then lessened in the second and third occurrences of the event. 

Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

Divorce also lowered life satisfaction and that dissatisfaction began two years before the divorce was initiated for men. On the other hand, life satisfaction for women increased three years after a divorce, suggesting small long-term benefits. 

Photo by Sander Sammy on Unsplash

Childbirth was generally considered a positive life event that yielded an increase in life satisfaction. However, the effects were the most powerful in the first year after the event and were more important to women than men. The childbirth was also more impactful.

Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

The death of a partner had a major impact on life satisfaction for both men and women but the death of a mother only led to a decrease in life satisfaction for women for up to a year after the event, which was one of the more interesting findings. 

Photo by Transly Translation Agency on Unsplash

No data was found to indicate that the death of a father impacted life satisfaction but the death of a child was associated with a large decrease in life satisfaction. It also had more of an impact on women in the year after the event. 

Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

Other events had no significant impact on life satisfaction even though they may have seemed like good candidates to do so. For example, a person's first job, retirement, and having a child move out were three events with no statistical impact. 

Photo by Vlad Sargu on Unsplash