They might not help you unload the dishwasher, but experts now suggest "they are even a substitute" for familial love.
New Study: Having This Companion Is as Good for Your Health as Marriage
Published on May 15, 2025
If you’re a “childless cat lady” or count another non-human as your proverbial plus-one, new data is suggesting—for what may be the first time—that many Westerners are finding every bit as much comfort in our relationships with our pets as in our romantic partnerships.
Publishing their findings in the journal Social Indicators Research, two researchers at the University of Kent and the London School of Economics studied how keeping a dog or cat as a pet could influence an individual’s health—and how that partnership compares to marriage.
Using data gathered from a survey of UK households, the researchers implemented a calculation they called the “life satisfaction approach,” developed by economists to estimate the “implicit price” or numerical worth “of different factors or occurrences in life.” Previously, marriage was determined to yield a life satisfaction worth of around £70,000, or about $93,000, while separation was linked to a deficit of £170,000, or around $190,000.
In contrast, looking into life satisfaction of pet owners, they reported: “We find that having a pet companion is worth up to £70,000 a year in terms of life satisfaction.” A similar financial amount has been shown to also yield the greatest degree of happiness, with some observers asserting that when our basic needs are met—financially, and now it appears emotionally, thanks to pets—our mental health is in the most ideal place.
All this leads to the next debate: which makes a better pet, dogs or cats? Turns out, it’s a mixed bag. The researchers suggest that dogs may provide more benefits, but they have higher “maintenance costs,” such as their need to be walked multiple times a day. Cats could potentially offer fewer benefits—but, at least in theory, they’re lower-maintenance.
The researchers admit that more research is needed to reach reliable conclusions: “It could be that happy and healthy people decide to take a pet as a companion rather than pets making people happy and healthy.”
However, they note, “The results in the present study bring strong support for the hypothesis that pets increase human life satisfaction and wellbeing similarly to family and friends and that, to some extent, they are even a substitute for these.”
For daily wellness updates, subscribe to The Healthy by Reader’s Digest newsletter and follow The Healthy on Facebook and Instagram. Keep reading:
