Should you get a cat, shun meat, live child-free and cancel your Facebook account; or get a dog, gorge yourself on steak, have a huge family — and post about it every day? We look at what new research tells us about the big choices in life.
CATS or DOGS
Are you a cat person or a dog person? The UK is renowned as a nation of pet-lovers and — after fish — cats and dogs are by far the most popular; 24 percent of households own a dog and 18 percent own a cat.
Illustration: Lance Liu
So which creature is best to share your house with? Some of it obviously comes down to how high-maintenance you want your pet to be; do you really want to take them out for a walk each morning and constantly pick up their poo? Then again, cat allergies are around twice as common as dog allergies.
“The evergreen statement is that ‘Dogs like their owner, cats like the owner’s home’ — by which they truly mean ‘cats do not like people,’” said Peter Pongracz of the Family Dog Project in Budapest, Hungary.
However, it is not necessarily as simple as that.
Dogs were domesticated before humans invented agriculture and livestock breeding. Their existence depended on their ability to stay close to, and be accepted, by humans. Although dogs are territorial, their concept of territoriality is highly flexible: Wherever their owner goes is their territory.
Cats, on the other hand, were domesticated when humans began to build permanent settlements in the Middle East; mostly as a home-guard against pests such as rodents. Their existence depends on the physical home and so this is what they regard — and defend — as their own territory.
Both cat and dog owners attribute highly sophisticated cognitive and social skills to their pets, but it is very difficult to say which animal is truly superior. Dog behavior has attracted more research — possibly because cats need to be tested in their own homes.
“The real lesson is that dogs and cats provide a similar experience to their owners as a thinking, feeling, empathic companion,” Pongracz said.
They may also boost your health. Children who live with a dog during their first year of life seem to have fewer respiratory tract and ear infections, while several studies have suggested that ownership of either pet reduces stress levels and may lower blood pressure.
Among older adults, owning a cat may even reduce your chances of dying from cardiovascular disease. In this context, the scratched furniture and smelly carpets seem a small price to pay.
CHILDREN OR CHILD-FREE
One in five women have not produced children by the age of 45, a proportion that only looks set to increase in the future. Admittedly, parenthood is not always a choice; accidental pregnancy and infertility can scupper even the best-laid plans.
However, whether you want them or not, there is no doubt that children have a profound effect on your life, providing a sense of purpose, enduring love and companionship on one hand, while being a massive drain on your financial resources, free-time and the environment, on the other. So which group is happier overall, parents or non-parents?
When it comes to romantic relationships, the answer seems clear.
“It really does seem to hold that child-free couples are happier with their relationships and happier with their partner than those who are parents,” Open University’s Enduring Love Project Jacqui Gabb said, which examines the factors that make long-term relationships work. “And same-sex couples who are child-free are the happiest group.”
And it is not simply that child-free couples have more time on their hands — they might have a very intense relationship with their God, or have a hobby that takes up a lot of their time. A key difference seems to be that they are still more likely to try to make time for one another; to say “I love you” and to talk openly to one another, Gabb has found.
In this respect, parents might take some lessons from them, be it through going on regular “date nights,” taking the dog for a walk together, or simply going out for a quiet coffee on a regular basis.
However, there are also upsides to parenting. Although mothers may be less happy with their romantic relationships, they are the happiest group overall, Gabb found. And a large Norwegian study published in the journal Social Indicators Research suggests that childless women report significantly lower life satisfaction and self-esteem than mothers — though this may alter as the expectations society places on women changes. So too, might the impact of having children on men’s lives; for now at least, the average difference in emotional wellbeing between fathers and non-fathers is less marked.
MARRIED or SINGLE
Bridget Jones called them “Smug Marrieds” — people in long-term relationships who pity the single, but as irritating as they may be, it seems married couples do have at least one thing to feel superior about: their health. Numerous studies have found a correlation between being married and a lower risk of diseases including diabetes, cardiovascular and respiratory problems. The effect is more pronounced for men, but women who are married or live with their partner also seem to have better health.
“There are various theories about why this might be,” University College London George Ploubidis said, who has tracked the long-term health of people born in 1958 and correlated it with their relationship status.
“On average, people who are in long-term relationships tend to have a healthier lifestyle than the single,” he said. “They may have a higher joint income, and relationships can also boost social networking and provide a buffer against the stresses of everyday life and major events.”
However, many single people may be just as healthy or healthier than those who are married. If you look after yourself, have a relatively good income and plenty of friends, you may be as healthy as those Smug Marrieds. For one thing, unmarried people appear to spend more time exercising, which could bring a host of benefits .
Neither should you stay in a bad relationship to avoid singledom; a study of 9,011 UK civil servants linked stressful relationships to a heightened risk of heart disease, while other research suggests divorce temporarily raises the risk of death from all causes.
In the long term, however, Ploubidis’s study suggests it is still probably better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all: “We found that people who experienced divorce or separation — as long as somewhere down the line they start a new relationship — their health at mid-life was similar to those in stable relationships.”
SOCIAL MEDIA/FACE TIME
Are you connected? According to recent statistics, 59 percent of the UK population now have active social media accounts, with Facebook by far the most popular (43 percent of the population use it). Social media undoubtedly have benefits, be it staying in touch with friends, hearing about news or events, or connecting with interesting — or useful — strangers. On the other hand, it may be a bit of a pact with the devil; because if you are not careful you could compromise your privacy and hand over your personal data to goodness knows who. Privacy concerns aside, there may be other downsides to Facebook use. Recent studies have suggested that it may encourage narcissism and it is associated with loneliness — although this is probably because lonely people are more likely to use Facebook.
It is also possible that constantly reading about your friends’ lives could leave you feeling less satisfied with your own.
University of Michigan’s Ethan Krosshas has been studying the effect of Facebook use on subjective wellbeing in college students. He said that there are two very different ways of using the technology; you can actively communicate with people and post information of your own, or you can be a passive user — simply checking your newsfeed and looking at other people’s photographs.
“Our research shows that when you engage in this kind of voyeuristic usage of the technology, it consistently leads to declines in how good people feel from one moment to the next,” Kross said. “Possibly this is because you’re constantly comparing yourself to other people, and when people post information, it’s usually of good things.”
Being an active user did not necessarily make people feel better about themselves, “it just doesn’t harm you,” Kross said.
So tighten up your privacy settings; become an active user, rather than a lurker, and you can maximize your chances of social media working for you
URBAN or RURAL
Eighty percent of the UK population live in towns and cities, yet the urban landscape accounts for just 6.8 percent of the UK’s land area, so city-dwellers are, relatively speaking, packed together like sardines. Cities generally mean more noise, crime, aggression and poorer air quality; but there are also more facilities, not just cinemas, galleries and nightclubs; but hospitals, medical specialists and emergency services are more readily accessible. So how does city living stack up against the rural idyll in terms of health and happiness?
It depends. If you compare elderly people living in urban Nottingham or rural Cambridgeshire, village-dwellers report eating a healthier diet, whereas urbanites spend more time walking. Then there are stress levels: recent research suggests that the brains of city-dwellers may be more primed to react to stressful stimuli, while urban living has also been found to raise the risk of anxiety and mood disorders by 21 percent and 39 percent respectively.
If you look at death rates, the biggest differences between town and country are for respiratory disease and lung cancer, with more city-dwellers succumbing, but at least some of this is related to higher levels of social deprivation and smoking in cities. Accidental death, on the other hand, is more common in the countryside, possibly because there are more fatal road traffic accidents.
Then there is happiness. According to 2011-2014 data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), if you ask people how happy they were yesterday, those living in the City of London, Corby and Wolverhampton are likely to give the lowest scores, while residents of Eilean Siar in the Western Isles or Armagh in Northern Ireland are likely to give the highest. City of London residents also said they were the most anxious, while those living in rural Fermanagh in Northern Ireland reported the lowest anxiety levels. However, the differences between areas are pretty small and are likely dwarfed by factors such as health, relationship status or employment status.
However, “in general, those who live in urban areas have lower life-satisfaction, a lower sense that the things they do are worthwhile, and higher anxiety levels than those who live in rural areas, regardless of their age,” said Lucy Tinkler, head of the personal wellbeing team at the ONS.
OMNIVORE or VEGAN
Depending on what you read, tucking into a juicy steak is either a death sentence or a delicious way to boost your iron levels. Veganism, meanwhile, is de rigueur for some, with celebrities such as Beyonce turning their backs on meat for at least limited periods, if not entirely. So should we follow?
From an environmental perspective, avid meat consumption is bad news. As much as 32 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from rearing animals for food, particularly cattle, while it takes 15,500 liters of water (equivalent to a small swimming pool) to produce a single kilogram of beef, but eliminating livestock, or substituting cattle with chickens or pigs, is not a perfect solution: There is plenty of pasture land that can not be used to grow crops, but can be grazed for ever. And animals can be fed the bits of crops — like stalks and leaves — that we cannot eat, reducing waste.
Even Friends of the Earth believes meat consumption can be sustainable, but we need to eat less and cut out mass-produced options.
It is a similar picture where our health is concerned. Numerous studies have linked the consumption of red meat with bowel cancer and heart disease, though the precise degree of risk is up for debate. The European-wide EPIC trial, for instance, found no link between the consumption of fresh red meat and cancer, but concluded that for every 50 grams of processed meat (roughly equivalent to a sausage) people consume a day, the risk of early death from all causes increases by 18 percent.
“Eating meat is good for the intake of certain micro-nutrients, but consumption should not be too high; that’s the only reasonable advice we can give for now,” said Sabine Rohrmann, University of Zurich epidemiologist and lead researcher of the EPIC trial. “And processed meat should definitely not be on the menu every day.”
Would it be healthier to go vegetarian? The EPIC results suggest not.
“What we see from studies like EPIC is an indication that people who eat small amounts of meat are as healthy, or maybe healthier, than vegetarians,” Rohrmann said.
Possibly this is because vegetarianism does not always automatically equate to a healthy diet.
Also, there is no evidence that eating poultry or fish, which are packed with protein and nutrients, increases cancer risk.
“It is perfectly fine to be a vegetarian, but you should take care about what you’re eating to ensure you don’t become deficient in nutrients such as iron, zinc and B vitamins,” Rohrmann said.
SAVE or SPEND
The debate over whether to pursue a policy of austerity, or spend our way out of debt, rages on at a national level, but what about our personal finances? Save those pennies for a rainy day, or splash out on the latest gadget that promises to boost your productivity or simply gives you pleasure?
People often say that money can not buy you happiness, but Elizabeth Dunn, professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and co-author of Happy Money, said: “Income does matter to happiness; it’s better to make more money than not a lot. But the relationship is smaller than most people assume.”
Indeed, a recent study found that once people reach an annual salary of US$75,000 any additional income has no bearing on how much they laugh or smile on any given day.
What is arguably equally important though, is how you spend your money. When Dunn and her colleagues randomly gave college students US$5 or US$20 and either instructed them to spend it on themselves or another person, those who spent it on someone else reported a happier mood for the rest of the day, regardless of how much money they received.
On the basis of this and other research, Dunn has come up with five rules for getting the biggest happiness bang for your buck.
Besides spending your money on other people, you are likely to get more pleasure from buying experiences such as holidays or trips to the theater, than from material objects. You should also try to make spending a treat; having our favorite things a little less often seems to enhance our ability to enjoy them. Similarly, delaying gratification by saving for things seems to produce more pleasure than simply buying them on credit, when they can appear to come for free. Finally, buy time.
“Spending money on a cleaner may free you up to enjoy your Saturday afternoon with your family rather than tidying the house,” Dunn said.
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