A New Study Says Pets Can Be Just as Good for Your Mental Health as a Spouse—Seriously

Researchers have long linked pet ownership to lower stress and increased happiness. But whether having a dog or cat actually boosts life satisfaction—or if more relaxed, joyful people simply tend to have pets—has remained a mystery. 

Now, a new study suggests the former: that furry friends themselves improve lives. “The question of whether pets make us happy can therefore be answered with a resounding ‘yes,’” Adelina Gschwandtner, PhD, senior economics lecturer at the University of Kent and one of the study’s authors, told Health.

That wasn’t the only question Gschwandtner and her colleagues answered. They also assigned a monetary equivalent to how much better having a pet dog or cat can actually make us feel. The verdict? It’s comparable to receiving up to £70,000 a year, or $92,655 at the current exchange rate—on par with the value economists have placed on major life choices such as being married or living in a partnership.

“The findings of this study provide valuable information on health policies and practices that could improve mental health and well-being by incorporating pets into community initiatives or other types of programs,” Ashwini Nadkarni, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who was not involved with the research, told Health.” Loneliness is a major epidemic and a public health crisis.”

The researchers used data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, which gathered survey answers from different years about pet ownership, personality traits, and life satisfaction. In total, the study included 2,617 survey responses from 769 different people.

To determine whether having a pet—specifically a cat or dog—truly makes people happier, the researchers controlled for factors such as age, sex, education, ethnicity, marital status, monthly income, and the number of children in the household. They also adjusted for differences in personality, given that they discovered that people with pets appear to be more open, conscientious, and extroverted than those without pets.

Another tool the scientists used is an instrumental variable, which helps untangle cause-and-effect relationships. Their chosen instrument was based on how often someone watches over their neighbor’s home when they’re away, a behavior linked to pet ownership but not happiness. If people who said yes to watching over a neighbor’s home tended to also be happier, it suggested that having a pet was likely the reason.

Pet ownership indeed emerged as a driving cause behind higher life satisfaction—to the tune of nearly $100,000 a year when translated to a monetary value. In addition to being similar in value to marriage, researchers found having a cat or dog was also comparable to regularly seeing friends and family.

“This might seem surprising,” Gschwandtner said. “But, given the fact that most people consider their pets as family members or friends, appears plausible.”

Still, the authors acknowledged that the results only extend to cats and dogs, not fish, hamsters, rabbits, or other animals people keep as pets. An additional limitation of the study is that data was not measured at multiple points to see how pet companionship might change over time. 

Claudia Giolitti-Wright, a licensed marriage and family therapist and founder of Psychotherapy for Young Women, told Health that she would have liked the study to take into account the variability in individual attachment styles between the person and the pet, which can influence how much comfort and connection the pet provides.

“Happiness is deeply subjective, so translating well-being into financial terms isn’t perfect,” Giolitti-Wright said. 

If you’re a dog or cat owner, you may not need science to tell you how much value your fur baby brings to your life. But Giolitti-Wright noted that from a public health and policy perspective, the results are “actually quite meaningful.”

“Assigning a dollar amount to emotional well-being makes the findings more digestible to institutions and decision-makers who often rely on economic models,” she said. For example, the findings could help them compare how much pets contribute to happiness—something abstract—to the cost of something more concrete, like building a new park.

Gschwandtner cites another example of how the research might be applied: when considering a current petition in the UK Parliament to distinguish pets from other types of property in civil and family proceedings. “At the moment, pets are valued at their purchasing price and are treated like objects,” she said. “In light of our findings, this needs to be reconsidered.”

Some landlords may also want to rethink banning tenants from keeping pets on their property, Gschwandtner added. “Every form of easing access to pets is beneficial to our life satisfaction, is of high value, and needs to be encouraged.”