I'm not a specialist in statistics and happiness, but let me put my two cents about it.

The statistics of the X and Y generations doing better in 'keeping families together more than twice effectively as our parents did' cannot be applied properly right now. Let's wait for a couple of tens of years to let the statistics get even, to let all the new generations live as long as 'our parents'.

Here should also be applied another kinds of statistics: of health condition; ecology; threat of nuclear war for 'our parents' generation or other global disasters that can impact your divorce statistics; number of born children; suicides; alcoholic and drug edicts; number of criminals, pedophiles and other culprits; and depression of representatives of different generations – to make a conclusion of happiness.

I'm almost sure that the value 'to take time' will not the help much the new generation fulfilling.

Let's for instance have a look at other nations.
Korean's: start work hard since they are 4! They are strictly taught to be disciplined since that age. But they are the one of the happiest nations in the world.
Why?

They worked so much that when they were 20-30-something, that now they sell all over the world their cars at prices equal to German!
They travel with their families all over the world and happy seeing many places!
They have got families with many happy children (not just a child as usual for X or Y)!
They know what they want, and this is not just 'taking time', and the world respects them!
Thus, they are happy, successful and with their large strong families!

In my opinion, what we can see proves that happiness or fulfillment is not in just taking time. It's somewhere beyond.

* * * * *

Andrey,
The statistic about divorce rates is generation X, not generation Y. Generation X is in their 40s. We have enough data to know. Gen x divorce rates are less than half those of baby boomers.

The research about what makes people happy — across borders and cultures — has to do almost 100% with personal relationships and level of optimism. I write about this research constantly on this blog. Divorce rate is integral to the personal relationships part of the equation. This is why gen X has had such a strong focus on keeping marriages together.

Penelope

The place to look for this is the good old "military industrial complex", and also NASA and other companies involved in highly technical systems meant for use in outer space.

These companies have kept people around well into their seventies simply because their accumulated knowledge is considered a most critical asset. The problem is, that they have been far too tardy in working to develop new people from the "ground up".

For decades it's been recognized that these two industries have been somewhat of an "old boys club"; a tightly knit and mostly impenetrable "closed shop". They have also known for the saem length of time what the unfortunate result would someday be of their hesitance to open up new positions for people who will need to be trained. They just preferred not to do anything about it until the lack of new blood showed a visible effect.

Well, it has been showing for the last five years at least, but their response to the sudden wave of retirements has been to throw anything and everything at the exiting employees to get them to stay, while continuing to put up barriers to the hiring of lower level younger employees. It's true that many companies have developed pretty good internship programs for engineering students, and do a goo djob of trolling the campuses when graduation time comes around.

The people they have preferred to ignore though, are the folks who do "everything but" rocket science and aerospace engineering. The folks who assemble what the "best & brightest" have designed, and who do all the other technical and administrative tasks involved in the development and manufacturing of aerospace systems.

There is considerable critical technical knowledge that these people carry as well as the engineers, and because of their own imposition of the "gray ceiling", these industries are backing themselves slowly into a financial corner. As happens in other industries, we have foreign competitors who don't maintain the same belief in depending so much on mature experience over young inspiration…