BENEFITS
OF MARRIAGE
Economic
·
Childhood poverty dramatically
increases outside of intact marriages. (National Longitudinal Survey
of Youth 1979-1996)
•
Marriage increases material well-being income, assets
and wealth, (inland, la., & waite,
Linda). (1995) "Till Death
Do Us Part: Marital Disruption and Mortality." American
journal of Sociology, I 100:1131-56.)
• Married men perform better and
earn more on the job than do unmarried men. Married men earn substantially more per hour
than men who are not currently married, a pattern that persists even when education, race, region, age, work experience, and
occupation are taken into account. Married workers are
more likely [than unmarried workers] to win high performance ratings and higher
performance ratings are strongly positively related to the probability of promotion. Data
indicate that marriage increases by almost 50 percent the probability of recent
hires receiving one of the top two performance ratings,
even if allowance is made for education, location and prior experience. (Sanders d. Korenman and David Neumark, "Does Marriage Really Make Men More
Productive," No. 29 in the Finance and Economics Discussion Series, Division of
Research and Statistics, Federal Reserve Board,
Washington, D.C., [May 1988])
•
Married individuals work
harder, earn more and save more. (Waite, l.j. (1995)
"Does Marriage Matter?")
•
Most poor
Children reside in single-parent families. (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population
Survey. March 2000.)
• Nearly 80% of
all children suffering long-term poverty come from broken or never-married families. (National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. 1979-2000.)
Physical
• Married men and women
generally live longer than single men and women. (Liliard, la, &
waite, Linda j. (1995) "Till Death Do Us Part: Marital
Disruption and Mortality." American journal of Sociology, 100:1131-56.)
•
Married people lead more active
sex lives than the single, and married people also express higher levels of satisfaction with their sex
lives than single or cohabiting people. (National Health and Social Life survey.)
• Divorced men who smoke have a 71 %
greater risk of early death than married men who smoke.
(National Institute for Healthcare
Research, 1995.)
• Divorced
people are more likely to have alcohol problems than married people, and are less likely
to recover. (National Institute for Healthcare
Research, 1995 Employment.)
• Married
mothers are half as likely to be victims of domestic violence, (u.s. Department of
justice, National Crime Victimization Survey, 1999.)
Social
• Children from single-parent
and broken families are more likely to end up in jail as adults. (Cynthia Harper and Sara
McLanahan, "Father Absence and Youth Incarceration," paper presented to American
Sociological Association in San Francisco, August 1998. Data also from
the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.)
• School expulsion is less
likely among children in married families. (National Longitudinal survey of Adolescent
Health, 1996.)
• High-risk
behavior in teens like early sexual activity, drug use, carrying a weapon and smoking is
less likely in intact healthy families. (National
Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, 1996.)
Emotional
• Recent
surveys have found that children from broken homes, when they become teenagers, have 2 to
3 times more behavioral and psychological problems than
do children from intact homes, (ziii and schoenbom, 1988.)
• Married men and women enjoy
better health and emotional well-being than unmarried men and women. (Susan Kennedy, et al.,
"Immunological Consequences of Acute and Chronic Stressors: Mediating Role of
Interpersonal Relationships,"
British Journal of Medical Psychology 61 [1988]:77-85.)
• A decade after their parents'
divorce, children still carry deep emotional scars from the event. (Judith s. Wallerstein,
"Children of Divorce: Report of a Ten-Year Follow-Up of Early Latency-Age
Children," American journal of Orthopsychiatry. 57, No.2 [April 1987], pp 199-211.
Wallerstein, Judith, Unintended Consequences of Divorce, 2001.)
• Married people are more than
twice as likely to be happy. (National Opinion Research Center, General Social Survey, 1998.)
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