Pets are soooo worth it

It is well-established that owning pets, on average, makes people happier. That is not just common sense but has also been shown time and again by academic studies. What is harder to establish, though, is whether pets ‘make’ you happy.

I mean, is this link between owning pets and being happier in life correlation or causation?

As an animal lover who is passionate about helping animals in the developing world, my answer is clear (and by the way, if you want to donate to help animals in St Vincent and the Grenadines, you can do so here; this is the charity that I am involved with).

But Michael Gmeiner and Adelina Gschwandtner tried to get causal evidence, not just correlation. To do this, they used a trick. They wanted to know if people are happier when they are asked to watch over their neighbours’ pets while they are travelling.

Unfortunately, there is no real-time survey of people and their happiness that also includes a question about whether they are watching their neighbour’s cat or dog. So, they did use a second-best option in the UK Household Longitudinal Survey that asked how often people are asked to watch over their neighbour’s property while controlling for the variables that measure social ties and closeness to neighbours in general. They show that this approach is correlated with pet ownership, though admittedly it is an imperfect measure (but this is a Friday post, so I won’t be too critical).

Their results are unequivocal. People who own a cat or a dog are clearly more satisfied with their lives, and their approach shows that this is causal. Once you get a pet, you do become happier. End of story – no more discussions.

Except one. They also tried to measure the monetary value of owning a pet. They asked people how much they are willing to pay for a cat or a dog and how much that would influence their happiness. This ‘willingness to pay’ put the value of owning a pet at about £70,000. And if you ask me, that is a low estimate.

In any case, if you can give them a good home, get yourself a pet. I promise it will make you happier, healthier, more successful, richer and in every way a better person. And to motivate you a little more, here is a picture of my two corgis for the weekend.