ABSTRACT
Individuals not in romantic relationships (i.e., singles) represent an emerging focus in close relationship research. Gender has been recognized as an important demographic variable in understanding singles’ experiences, with some existing Western literature suggesting that single women report higher levels of well-being than single men. However, the cross-cultural generalizability of these findings remains unclear, such as in Eastern contexts like China. China presents a compelling case for examining these gender differences due to its unique tension between traditional Confucian values that link female worth to marriage and an evolving societal shift toward individualism. As such, the present study recruited 1629 Chinese-speaking never-married singles (M
age = 29.41 years) via Credamo, a nationally representative data platform, and assessed multiple dimensions of well-being. Results indicated that single women reported higher well-being than single men, showing greater life satisfaction, relationship status satisfaction, lower desire for a partner, and fear of being single, but no differences in family satisfaction. Further analyses revealed that these gender differences remained largely robust across age, urbanization, and geographical regions. Overall, these data suggest the potential that there are culturally universal patterns in the relation between gender and singles’ well-being, whereby women are happier single than men.