Gender Differences in Marital Satisfaction: A Meta‐analysis
2014/01/13 by Jeffrey B. Jackson, Richard B. Miller, Megan Oka +2 · 395 citations
Medicine · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Attachment and Relationship Dynamics #Clinical psychology #Demography #Family Dynamics and Relationships #Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving #Medicine #Meta-analysis #Moderation #Population #Psychology #Social psychology
paper · doi:10.1111/jomf.12077
published in Journal of Marriage and the Family 76(1), 105-129 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2014/01/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Abstract
The purpose of the present meta‐analysis was to empirically test the widely held assumption that women experience lower marital satisfaction than men. A total of 226 independent samples with a combined sum of 101,110 participants were included in the meta‐analysis. Overall results indicated statistically significant yet very small gender differences in marital satisfaction between wives and husbands, with wives slightly less satisfied than husbands; moderator analyses, however, indicated that this difference was due to the inclusion of clinical samples, with wives in marital therapy 51% less likely to be satisfied with their marital relationship than their husbands. The effect size for nonclinical community‐based samples indicated no significant gender differences among couples in the general population. Additional moderator analyses indicated that there were also no gender differences when the levels of marital satisfaction of husbands and wives in the same relationship (i.e., dyadic data) were compared .
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