From February 7 to 14, 2011, America celebrates National Marriage Week USA. In Pennsylvania, communities across the Commonwealth are beginning to pay attention to the issues of family support, early child development, and child abuse
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and neglect prevention. More and more, these issues are understood to be deeply interrelated, and programs targeting children or parents individually should know that they must attend to whole families to affect real changes.
Marriage Week USA brings to the forefront the issue of the importance of marriage in society and its impact. Author and columnist Maggie Gallagher states in her book The Case for Marriage that a married person lives longer, enjoys better health, better sex and is wealthier. This was a report on 10-year-long study by the University of Chicago.
Let’s take one point from this study and focus on the benefits of marriage and the current economic situation our cities and municipalities are facing. Would we do better with children being raised in a family with a mom and a dad? Yes, of course. Well, society should then emphasize marriage, one may conclude.
The economic benefits of marriage are substantial, both for individuals and for society as a whole. Marriage is a wealth-generating institution. Married couples create more economic assets on average than do otherwise similar singles or cohabiting couples. Study after study shows that “individuals who are not continuously married have significantly lower wealth than those who remain married throughout their lives.” Compared to those continuously married, those who never married have a 75% reduction in wealth and those who divorced and didn’t remarry have a reduction of 73%.
One might think that the explanation for why marriage generates economic assets is because those people who are more likely to be wealth creators are also more likely to marry and stay married. And this is certainly true, but only in part. The institution of marriage itself provides a wealth-generation bonus. It does this through providing economies of scale (two can live more cheaply than one), and as implicitly a long-term personal contract, it encourages economic specialization. Working as a couple, individuals can develop those skills in which they excel, leaving others to their partner. Also, married couples save and invest more for the future, and they can act as a small insurance pool against life uncertainties such as illness and job loss.
To host a program in your community, book a speaker for your next event or to learn how we can strengthen our families, contact Lourdes.
