In contrast, poverty is something that most Americans will experience fora short period of time as a consequence of very “normal” occurrences—theloss of a job, the birth of a child, the transition to adulthood, the dissolutionof a marriage, and so on.

“Basically, life events do matter,” Yap says. “Things like marriage, childhood, widowhood, unemployment do matter in the short-term. But in some cases, these life events don’t have long-lasting implications on psychological adjustment.” “One thing you can take away from the study,” he adds, “is that, on average, marriage seems to be a good thing.”