Scientists have measured the money’s worth of joy pets bring — and it might be more than your annual salary

The unadulterated joy in a wagging tail or a soft meow can rarely be achieved through anything else. Having animals around you has come to be a sure-shot way to reconnect with nature and yourself, as a study conducted in 2020 found that pet interactions have complex effects on how we feel and perceive our environment. Simply put, their presence helps reduce negative feelings, while playing with them might erase any sorrow altogether — this influence has been termed “the pet effect.”

This year, the University of Kent conducted a study across 2,500 households, focusing their survey on factors like life fulfillment, personality traits, and the companionship of pets. Their results were then fit into a model known as the “life satisfaction approach” (LSA) which is a “nonmarket valuation technique” building on recent developments in “subjective well-being research in economics”. This method was brought into existence due to the intangible nature of factors influencing our daily life — such as happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment, desire, and more. It assigns a numerical value or ‘cost’ that one would be willing to pay in order to achieve that kind of subjective well-being. To simplify the concept: the LSA method calculates the real-world price of intangible factors affecting life. Olivia Miller from Kent explained, “For example, economists have shown using life satisfaction surveys that marriage, compared to being single, is worth around £70,000 ($89,000) a year for a representative person in Great Britain.” 

The new study from Kent states, “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.” To uncover this mystery, researchers Dr. Michael W. Gmeiner from London School of Economics and Dr. Adelina Gschwandtner from Kent’s School of Economics prepared a comprehensive survey and study method based on the LSA approach. They found that “a pet companion increases life satisfaction by 3 to 4 points on a scale of 1 to 7.” Translated into monetary value, the researchers found that “having a pet companion is worth up to £70,000 a year in terms of life satisfaction.” This is similar to values associated with friendship reunions, meeting loved ones after a long time, coming home after break, and several other traditional events considered to carry a large emotional impact.

Calling them “social catalysts,” the researchers have tried to determine the main motive behind pet ownership. “Determining a causal relationship is difficult because there is potentially reverse causality. It could be that happy and healthy people decide to take a pet as a companion rather than pets making people happy and healthy,” they write, while maintaining that the opposite — a depressed person getting a pet in order to manage their emotions — is also a possibility. “If we want to design policy interventions that reduce the surging healthcare costs worldwide, determining the direction of causality is crucial.”

Researchers hope to see some shift in the laws surrounding pets. If they are so necessary to our well-being, then surely they must be allowed into more enclosures than they currently are. The policies around adoption of strays, differing maintainance costs, and the lack of time often pull people away from getting a pet. However, with this study, we hope it is clearer than ever that now is the time to shop. Researchers will soon involve other animals in their study as well, limiting it to 2 this time since they are the most popularly domesticated.