The shelf · Britain
Does Shiny Happy Singles hold up?
Shiny Happy Singles: Celebrating the Joy of Independent, Childfree Lives, by Lucy Meggeson (2025)
A celebratory book on single, child-free life for women, by the host of a podcast on the subject.
The short answer
Its happiness claim rests on a misread survey; its projection is real but American and narrow.
The claims, checked
Unmarried, child-free women are statistically the happiest group in society.
Does not hold The claim traces to a finding in Paul Dolan's Happy Ever After that rested on a misread survey variable.
Evidence: EWTN News, on the corrected analysis
45% of women are predicted to be single by 2030.
Holds with conditions A 2019 Morgan Stanley projection for American women aged 25 to 44, up from 41% in 2018. It is one bank's projection for one country and one age group.
Evidence: Morgan Stanley, 2019