{"id":6088,"date":"2025-04-08T10:52:44","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T09:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/?p=6088"},"modified":"2025-04-08T10:52:44","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T09:52:44","slug":"do-we-prefer-our-pets-to-our-partners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/2025\/04\/08\/do-we-prefer-our-pets-to-our-partners\/","title":{"rendered":"Do we prefer our pets to our partners?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We couldn\u2019t be prouder to see our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/people\/444\/gschwandtner-adelina\"><strong>Dr Adelina Gschwandtner<\/strong><\/a> front and centre on the front page of <em data-start=\"203\" data-end=\"214\">The Times<\/em>. It\u2019s a huge moment that highlights just how timely her research on happiness economics really is &#8211; especially as it&#8217;s National Pet Day this Friday!<\/p>\n<p>Economists, including Dr Gschwandtner, have calculated that the psychological benefits of pet ownership are roughly equivalent to those gained from marriage. They also concluded that the improvement in mood was on a par with what you would expect to see from somebody receiving an extra \u00a370,000 in annual income.<\/p>\n<p>The research drew on data collected from 2,500 British households, selected to be representative of the country as a whole. The authors found that living with a pet companion was linked to an increase in life satisfaction of 3-4 points,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Many people don&#8217;t realise how important their pets are for them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Dr Adelina Gschwandtner, Senior Lecturer in Economics<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Read Rhys Blakely&#8217;s whole article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.com\/uk\/science\/article\/cat-dog-boosts-wellbeing-wife-husband-pb7nc7nft\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We couldn\u2019t be prouder to see our Dr Adelina Gschwandtner front and centre on the front page of The Times. It\u2019s a huge moment that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/2025\/04\/08\/do-we-prefer-our-pets-to-our-partners\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78674,"featured_media":6091,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[146886,722],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6088"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78674"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6088"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6090,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6088\/revisions\/6090"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}