Recent research published in Journal of social and personal relationships provides evidence that both having a happy romantic relationship and feeling financially secure independently contribute to a person’s overall health and well-being. The authors found that satisfying relationships protect mental and physical health, regardless of a person’s objective income or education level. These findings suggest that public health efforts may benefit from treating social connectedness and economic security as two separate but equally important pillars of a healthy life.
Human health greatly depends on the environment and social conditions in which the person lives. Two main factors known to influence people’s longevity and health are romantic relationships and socio-economic status. Socioeconomic status refers to a combination of an individual’s income, education level, and general social status in the community. High-quality romantic relationships generally predict better physical functioning, lower rates of depression, and higher overall life satisfaction.
Similarly, higher socio-economic status (SES) tends to have a lower risk of physical illness and better mental health. People with more economic and educational resources typically experience less chronic stress and have better access to quality health care. Even though both of these areas play a major role in human well-being, academic research tends to focus on them separately. Researchers often study marital quality without looking deeply into couples’ specific financial circumstances.
Public health professionals may also examine poverty and physical health without considering individuals’ home lives. Because of this separate approach, it remained largely unclear whether the health benefits of positive relationships persist after accounting for income and education. Some of the benefits of relationships may be a side effect of financial security, or vice versa. The researchers designed this study to directly compare the relative strength of relationship quality and socioeconomic status in predicting overall happiness.
“The relationship science literature has built a strong case that relationship quality is important for health, but the research often does not account for socioeconomic status, even though SES is one of the most well-documented predictors of health,” said study author Hannah Williamson, associate professor of human development and family science at the University of Texas at Austin. “If we want to know how important relationships are, we need to rigorously test that question alongside, not instead of, SES.”
The research team also wanted to see whether these effects applied to different types of societies. To test this, the authors compared data from the United States and Spain. “We also wanted to test it in multiple settings, since most of this research has only been done in the United States,” Williamson said. “By collaborating with colleagues in Spain, we were able to see whether this pattern holds true in different social safety nets and health systems.”
Although these two high-income countries share similar levels of income inequality, they have very different health systems. In the United States, access to health care is often directly tied to full-time employment and educational attainment. In Spain, citizens have access to a universal healthcare system that provides low and standardized healthcare costs to all citizens. This structural difference allowed the researchers to test whether the health benefits of income and education vary depending on a country’s social safety net.
To examine these trends, researchers used online survey panels to gather large, nationally representative survey samples from both countries. The U.S. sample included 1,004 adult participants collected through a platform called Dynata. Their average age was 45 years, and their median household income was $6,000 per month. The Spanish sample included 969 adult participants recruited through a platform called NetQuest, with an average age of 53 years and a median household income of 2,200 euros per month.
The authors used two specific concepts to measure relationship quality. First, we asked participants to rate their overall relationship satisfaction using a simple 7-point scale. Next, we measured a concept called partner perceived responsiveness. This psychological term refers to the degree to which a person feels understood, acknowledged, and genuinely cared for by their romantic partner.
The study also assessed socio-economic status in three different ways. Participants reported monthly household income and having the highest level of formal education. They also completed a measure of subjective social status. In this subjective measure, participants looked at a picture of a 10-run ladder representing their country’s social hierarchy and selected the rung that they thought best represented their position.
To measure the results, the researchers asked participants to report on three areas of their lives. These include overall life satisfaction, symptoms of mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, and self-ratings of overall physical health. For example, mental health symptoms were assessed using a four-item questionnaire that measured how often participants felt depressed or worried. The authors then used statistical models to see how relational and socio-economic variables predicted these three health outcomes.
The data showed that high relationship satisfaction and perceived partner responsiveness consistently predicted higher life satisfaction in both countries. People with happy relationships also reported better physical health and fewer mental health symptoms. Importantly, these positive health effects remained strong even after the researchers took into account participants’ income, education, and subjective social status. This provides evidence that feeling loved and understood by your partner acts as an independent source of happiness.
Williamson pointed out that good relationships and money have clear benefits. “The main point is that relationship quality and socio-economic status are not substitutes for each other,” she told SciPost. “Each affects health independently. Regardless of income or education, having a responsive and caring partner was associated with improved mental health.”
Subjective social status also emerged as a consistent predictor of health status in both countries. Participants who felt they were higher on the social ladder were more likely to report better physical and mental health, regardless of their actual income. This effect was strong in both the United States and Spain. Our subjective sense of social status appears to have its own psychological weight, beyond the actual numbers in our bank accounts.
“On the socio-economic side, it was people’s own sense of social status, rather than their actual income or education, that consistently predicted both mental and physical health,” Williamson said. “In other words, strong relationships do not completely offset the health effects of financial hardship, and financial security alone does not guarantee good relationships or physical health, both of which deserve attention.”
When considering objective socio-economic measures, the authors found different patterns between the two countries. In the United States, a person’s level of education was a strong predictor of their life satisfaction, mental health, and physical health. Higher education generally reduces negative health symptoms. Income also predicted positive health outcomes in the American sample, but the effect was weaker and less consistent than the effect of education.
In Spain, the pattern appeared quite different in terms of objective wealth and schooling. Educational level did not significantly predict life satisfaction or physical health in Spanish participants. The authors suggest that this difference likely reflects structural differences between the two societies. Spain has universal health care, so a person’s physical health may be less dependent on their level of education or ability to secure a job with medical benefits.
“In both countries, subjective SES, how people assess their social status, consistently predicted health outcomes more than objective income or education,” Williamson said. “We also found that the association between education and health was weaker in Spain than in the United States. This is consistent with the idea that universal health care access may reduce the role of education in shaping health outcomes through access to better employer-provided health insurance.”
As with all studies, there are some limitations that should be considered. This study relied entirely on observational data taken at one point in time. Because the researchers didn’t follow the participants over many years, they can’t say for sure whether good relationships lead to better health, or whether being healthy simply makes it easier to maintain good relationships. Health, wealth, and relationship satisfaction may influence each other in a continuous cycle.
“Because the data are cross-sectional, we cannot speak to the direction of causality,” Williamson noted. “Because this is a comparison of two countries, we can explain the differences between the United States and Spain, but we cannot pinpoint exactly which institutional or cultural factors are responsible.”
Additionally, the researchers used single-item questions to measure many of the core concepts. These short questions help keep the survey short and prevent participants from quitting early, but they don’t provide as much detailed information as longer, multi-item questions. The data were also completely self-reported. Self-report data can be affected by mood on the day the survey is taken and by cultural differences in the way people express their emotions.
Future research could build on these findings by following couples over time. This approach helps scientists understand how changes in income directly affect the quality of relationships and physical health.
“We would like to extend this comparison to more countries to see how general the pattern is and move to a longitudinal design that can tell us more directly about causality,” Williamson said. “We’re also interested in identifying specific mechanisms, such as access to health care, that could explain why these associations vary across countries.”
Investigating how social policies interact with personal relationships can help public health officials design better ways to support vulnerable communities. Programs that target both financial security and relationship skills may offer the best path forward for people’s health.
The study, “Romantic Relationships and Socioeconomic Status as Independent Predictors of Health and Well-Being: Evidence from the United States and Spain,” was authored by Inmaculada Valor Segura, María Alonso Ferrez, and Hannah C. Williamson.
