Have a pet? They could boost your happiness as much as $120K a year – National
Want to know what’s worth as much as a six-figure pay rise?
A pet.
New research shows that owning a dog or cat could provide the same emotional boost as earning an additional $120,000 CAD annually.
The study, published March 31 in the journal Social Indicators Research, shed light on the impact pets have on human happiness, finding that they can also give a life satisfaction boost equal to regular hangouts with friends or even being married.
“More and more people are reporting pets to be members of the family,” said Jacklyn Ellis, director of behaviour, at the Toronto Humane Society. “So there is certainly a shift in the way we think of how these animals fit into our lives.”
Sixty per cent of Canadian households own at least one cat or dog, according to 2022 data from the Canadian Animal Health Institute (CAHI), with an estimated 8.5 million cats and 7.9 million dogs in homes across the country.
Studies have already shown that animals can boost both physical and mental health, helping to reduce stress, encourage physical activity, and even contribute to a longer life.
“Companionship, this certainly helps foster positive mental health on a day-to-day basis, which can help make you more resilient to crises that come up and certainly are associated with more satisfaction scores and better quality of life assessments to pet owners,” Ellis said.
Although this is known, the researchers from the new United Kingdom data wanted to understand if owning a pet directly boosts happiness, rather than it being a case that happy people tend to own pets.
While pet ownership is often linked with greater well-being, the study emphasized that this relationship is complex — and sometimes it’s people facing loneliness or life challenges who seek out pets, rather than the other way around.
“There is substantial evidence from psychology and medicine that pets are associated with better health and higher life satisfaction of their human companions. Yet whether this relationship is causal or purely a correlation remains largely unknown,” the researchers said at the introduction of their study.
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The study also aimed to quantify the mental benefits of pet care on psychological well-being and life satisfaction.
Ellis mentioned that she had never seen this approach before and called the results “fascinating.”
To see how pets affect happiness, researchers used a survey in the U.K. with data from 2,500 households. They focused on households with cats and dogs, not other pets like fish or rabbits.
Participants, ages 16 to 99, rated their overall life satisfaction. The researchers took into account things like personality, health, and social connections, and used a method called “instrumental variables” to make sure pet ownership wasn’t just a result of being happier.
This helped them figure out how they say pets alone impact life satisfaction.
When researchers compared pet owners to non-pet owners, they found that pet owners actually reported slightly lower life satisfaction on average. On a scale of one to seven, pet owners scored 5.2, while non-pet owners came in slightly higher at 5.29.
But the researchers stressed that the small difference doesn’t necessarily mean pets make people less happy. The researchers said this could be because people who are already feeling lonely or low may be more likely to get a pet for companionship. That’s why the study used data to figure out the real cause-and-effect relationship.
When it comes to pets, about 22 per cent of the people in the study said they cared for a pet— either a cat, a dog, or another type of animal.
The researchers noticed some clear trends. For example, people who owned pets tended to be more extroverted, open and conscientious. They were also more likely to be married and have kids living with them, which often means a bigger household.
When comparing cat and dog owners specifically, they found that cat owners scored higher on traits like openness and conscientiousness but were less extroverted than dog owners. They also noticed that cat owners were slightly more neurotic.
Overall, the researchers found that owning a dog seemed to have a positive impact on life satisfaction. The effect for cat owners was positive too, but less significant.
The researchers also aimed to put a monetary value on the happiness people get from owning a pet.
They found that pets, especially dogs, had a pretty big impact on people’s happiness, estimating the value of having a dog in one’s life to be about $120,000 CAD — a number that’s comparable to what other studies have found as the comparable monetary value of regular social interactions, like meeting up with friends and family.
The study also explored whether having a pet could take the place of having a romantic partner, like a spouse.
It found that pets can potentially act as an emotional substitute for a partner, especially for people who aren’t married.
“We observe that the interaction term between pets and being married reduces the coefficient for dogs and hypothesise that pet companionship can potentially be viewed as a substitute for relationships at home,” the researchers said.
Ellis suggested that there are a few reasons why cats and dogs bring us happiness, and why we bring them happiness in return.
A big part of this comes from the long history of domestication, where over thousands of years, humans and pets have developed a deep understanding of each other’s behaviours and emotional needs, she said. This mutual understanding creates a bond that’s more like a symbiotic relationship.
“They’re also just completely much more expressive pets than a lot of other animals can be, so it’s a lot easier to watch a dog’s body language and know exactly how they’re feeling,” she said.
And for those who crave the companionship of a dog or cat but can’t have one, Ellis suggested volunteering at a shelter or trying pet fostering.
“It can be even more meaningful for people who are dealing with loneliness or social isolation. It can make a huge difference in those situations,” she said.
