Who makes more money, cat people or dog people?

Who do you think makes more money, dog lovers or cat lovers? Go ahead, guess.

If you said dog lovers, you’d be right! Among Japanese men anyway.

Japanese marketing company Neo Marketing conducted a survey of 394 men and women ages 20 – 59 and found that men who identified as dog lovers made approximately $10,000 a year more than men who identified as cat lovers.

Rocket News reports:

“Out of the total number of respondents 286 of them had a job, and the survey asked them for information on their income, as well as asking whether they would describe themselves as a ‘dog person’ or a ‘cat person’. When looking at the correlation between the two, it emerged that while the average income for a dog-loving man was 5.61 million yen (around US$55,200), the average for a cat lover was just 4.64 million (around $45,600). That’s a difference of around 1 million yen ($10,000)!”

It makes sense. When considering the question before reading the article, I guessed dog lovers would earn more. Because dogs require an active commitment that cats don’t. You have to train them, walk them, throw sticks for them, and ask them over and over who a good boy is.

Cats, on the other hand, are less work. Yes, you must be constantly changing their food brand as they repeatedly pick a favourite, then decide they don’t like it anymore – while dogs will eat the same thing every day for ten years and love it. But cats use a litter box and generally lounge around most of the day, then spend their waking hours alternating between demanding affection and looking at you disdainfully. They are less work.

So, it makes sense that those who own dogs might be more of the work ethic-y type (er, I’m pretty sure “work ethic-y” is one of this year’s new words in the Oxford dictionary).

Other research on the topic out of the University of Texas suggests that dog people are generally more the sort of people you’d want working for you.

Researcher Sam Gosling found that those who define themselves as “dog people” are more extroverted, agreeable, and conscientious than self-described “cat people.”

“Fans of felines, on the other hand, are more neurotic but also more open than their canine-loving counterparts,” said a press release.

Gosling said his findings suggest that “there are significant differences on major personality traits between dog people and cat people. Given the tight psychological connections between people and their pets, it is likely that the differences between dogs and cats may be suited to different human personalities.”

Back to the Japanese survey, interestingly, the findings about men were not mirrored when it came to women.

“For women, dog lovers had an annual income of 2.23 million [yen] (around $22,000), while cat lovers earned slightly more at 2.4 million (around $24,000)…The fact that women are earning half what men are earning is another matter entirely.”

Admittedly, Rocket News points out that it’s “not the most scientific of surveys.”

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