Do College Degrees Increase Happiness?

This is a question that many in our society are asking. For many years, it seemed as though education was the path to a successful and happy life, but these days there are many who question whether college degrees can deliver.

In a previous post, I posted a couple of graphs that show how income and education are very strongly correlated and education is also strongly linked to having retirement accounts (e.g., 401(k)s, 403(b)s, IRAs, etc.). In this post, I want to point to a recently published study that tracked 50 years of US data.

The journal article is written in fairly technical language (as appropriate for a social scientific publication) and includes several "twists and turns." But the overall message is that, compared to individuals without undergraduate (or graduate) degrees, those who earn a university degree tend to report higher levels of happiness.

There are a few nuances. For example, happiness levels went down after the COVID-19 pandemic. Occupation and income, while strongly related to education, are different and may have independent effects on life satisfaction levels. And there have been a couple of time periods in which undergraduate degree holders reported higher levels of happiness than their counterparts wih graduate degrees (that is, masters and doctoral degrees). But most of the time, the pattern holds: the more education, the more satisfaction with life.

Overall, this only reinforces (at least in my mind) the idea that earning a college or university degree increases the chances of having a satisfactory and productive life. As I wrote in the earlier post, expensive as it may be, higher education is very much worth the investment!