The data is in, and it reveals the secrets to a happy relationship.
A unique study which has tracked 17,000 Australians for almost a quarter-century shows an equal division of housework, child care and earnings were “significant predictors” of stronger relationship quality.
Couples who shared weekly hours of paid and unpaid work “approximately” evenly reported higher relationship quality on average than couples where the division of paid and unpaid work was less balanced. This was true for couples with dependent children and those without, according to the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey.
Melbourne University economics professor and report co-author Roger Wilkins said higher rates of female workforce participation and career aspirations were key drivers of this trend.
“Historically, we saw a division of labor where women tended to specialise more in home production as we call it in economics – that is running the household – while men tended to specialise in paid employment, but that has shifted a lot over time,” he said.
“Now less specialisation and a more equitable division of both paid and unpaid work translates to better satisfaction for both partners in a relationship.”
In an unexpected twist, women report greater relationship satisfaction when housework and child care are shared equally, but not when their partner does most of these tasks. Also, women in female-primary-earner couples report lower relationship satisfaction compared to women in a male-primary-earner couple or an equal-earner couple.
The survey reveals another key relationship benchmark: 24 years.
That’s how long ratings of relationship strength decline following the honeymoon highs of the early years. But after the 24-year mark, relationship quality begins to improve and increases year on year, eventually surpassing where it started.
Melbourne University researcher Inga Lass, also a co-author, calls this the “U-curve” in relationship satisfaction in the decades after a couple moves in together.
“On average, it feels very strong at first, with that rating slowly declining for 24 years, before it picks back up.”
“When you think about the trajectory of a relationship, there’s a good chance that potentially stressful factors like work, bills and raising children start to ease around the 25-year mark, allowing couples to prioritise their relationship,” said Lass.
The chart above shows the U-curve pattern for satisfaction levels that most long-term relationships follow. The low point, after a little over two decades together, typically comes for both men and women when they reach their mid-to-late 40s. The subsequent satisfaction rebound is strong for men but comes later and is less pronounced for women.
Men and women in their 20s and early 30s report similar levels of satisfaction with relationships, but a gender gap opens from the late 30s onwards as women report greater dissatisfaction. That gender gap “remains pronounced throughout the second half of life”, the report says.
Overall, life-partner relationships are “very strong” in Australia, the report found, although men consistently report higher satisfaction scores than women.
But the HILDA survey shows relationship rankings have been lower on average so far this decade (between 2020 and 2024) than they were at the beginning of the century (between 2003 and 2006), soon after the study began. This may reflect the social and economic upheavals since 2020, especially the pandemic and the subsequent cost of living crunch driven by elevated inflation and rising interest rates.
The happiest couples appear to be childless, with relatively even earnings and share of the housework, while the least satisfied were couples with dependent children where the mother is the primary earner and typically undertakes most unpaid work.
Women in same-sex relationships report greater relationship quality than those in opposite-sex relationships, but this is not the case among men.
People living in mainland capital cities reported higher relationship quality on average than people living in regional and rural areas.
The survey revealed two clear factors that contribute to lower relationship quality: financial stress and if either partner has a disability.
Wilkins said that in opposite-sex couples, the woman’s satisfaction level is a much better predictor of the end of a relationship than men’s satisfaction level.
“Women are also more likely to initiate the dissolution as well,” he said.
The HILDA survey has tracked the same 9000 households since 2001; the newly published survey was taken in 2024.
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