There is a New York Times article about how married couples are better off financially than their single counterparts.
But, while it did a good job of describing the wealth gap between married and single, it didn’t do a good job of describing the reasons behind it – looking at whether, for example, the relationship was causative (and in which direction) or merely correlated. I imagine there’s a little of everything going on.
People who have money are more likely to get married. People who get married are more likely to save money. And the sorts of habits and abilities that make people able to make money also make them able to enter into and sustain a marriage. I don’t think it’s simply a matter of telling poor people to get married and they’ll wind up wealthier. (See, e.g. the proposal for an “Office of Marriage Promotion”) A lot of the dysfunctions that make people poor would also make their marriages a disaster (and still leave them poor) even assuming they were able to find a willing partner.
Studies also show that the poor would like to get married and aspire to all the middle class accoutrements that come with it. But the cost of exit, in terms of divorce, are a logical barrier to entry of marriage. Most everyone knows someone who has gone through a brutal and financially ruinous divorce. For someone on the margins, it is mammoth.
I agree with your last point, Dog, that the dysfunctions that make and keep people poor undermine marriages that they enter into.
In a sense, marriage is doubling down. It can create wealth through shared costs of living. But it also doubles dysfuntions, making one spouse’s problems suddenly the problems of the other. Child support costs can be ruinous to a second relationship. (Not a normative statement, just factual). And the problem of combining families and finanicial problems can be substantial.
This is a complicated issue, and some of the problems have a chicken vs. egg flavor to them. We know that educated people who have more money tend to be more successful at marriage, but people who are educated and successful tend to marry later, which has a lot to do with good marriages. Poor people, and less educated people tend to marry earlier, and that tends to make problems worse if they are not very mature to begin with. And if one is not very mature, one may not communicate very well, engage in all kinds of behavior which may be dysfunctional, have unrealistic expectations for the marriage (e.g., You are here to make me happy and now all my needs will be met.) and end in divorce.
You have probably heard that about 50% of couples divorce. Not really true. The most recent data I heard is that 35% of first marrieds divorce. The second and third marriages run about 65% divorce, and people who live together, the longer they have lived together, the percent of divorce is even higher. The biggest risk group seems to be people who have lived together for a number of years.
Often, people who decide to get counseling for their marriage tend to be at least one, two or three years after the time when they should have gotten it. There is now solid research that allows people to predict whether a marriage will be successful from a 15 minute interview, because they come into the marriage with habits and unproductive styles that eventually lead to divorce (see these names: Markman, Stanley, Gottman).. For some reason, people like to spend a whole lot more on getting married than they do on preventing divorce.
Lots of cynics around. It was Rod Stewart who said that instead of getting married, find a woman you don’t like and give her a house..
Really interesting area.
Stuart, the information you shared about cohabitation is very interesting. One would think that time together would build a stronger relationship. A study I remember found that if a marriage stayed together for a few years it was a greatest risk of breakup when the last child left the nest.
Another study found that wives filed to file for divorce very early in the relationship, while husbands filed later.
Recently, I read in the semi-popular press that a marriage is more likely to be doomed when the wife is dissatisfied than when the husband is dissatisfied, so that fits with your last statement. Apparently, most divorces happen during the first couple of years, though we tend to hear the most about ones where the people have lived together for many years.
A great deal of research and knowledge has accumulated about this subject in the last 20 years, but people who are in crisis are not likely to “consult the research” when they are looking for evidence to blame the other one for the deterioration in the relationship.
Apparently people who have lived together for 6 or 7 years before marrying do not view the institution of marriage the same as people who have not lived together or who may have lived together briefly. You have heard the saying “it’s just a piece of paper”. If they really believe that, divorce is probably not such a big jump. You are less likely to divorce if you see it as a huge personal failure, and family and community are likely to come down on you for it, and you are really motivated to work things out. Fortunately, many people look at each other with the understanding that things don’t get any better if you just walk out, and they figure it out somehow. I’m sure many people can come forward and claim they don’t fit the picture, but research tends to be about groups, not individuals. Rules deal with straight lines. People think in circles.
@Carlito Brigante & @Stuart
I think the reason for the long co-habituation couples being more likely to divorce is because people often have a lot lower standards for co-habiting versus marriage. There are many people willing to co-habituate with people that they would never think of marrying. So instead of co-habituation weeding out bad mates before marriage, it can have the opposite effect if it goes on for too long, people who have co-habituated together for such a long enough that get stuck with someone that they would have never married originally.
Over a long time frame, they become dependent on each other, they have shared expenses, they have shared budgets, they have shared kids together, etc. So by the time these particular long term co-habituation couples finally get married, they are likely getting married for reasons that they feel forced into doing, while still continuing to build on a fragile relationship. This fragility makes them higher risk for divorce, and I think the idea that marriage is only a piece of paper is a secondary reason at best for higher divorce rates.
Couples getting married based on fragile relationships does not help the marriage rate, which dooms the intent of this bill.
Interesting idea. I suspect there is some research on that. Meanwhile, back to meaningless ideologically-driven legislation on which there is no research at all to support it. In fact, there is probably sound data to affirm how useless a lot of it is.
What I wrote about cohabitation was all true about a year ago, but some areas of the field move faster than other areas. Kuperberg writing in April 2014 published some research in the J. of Marriage and Family which shed some new light on the issue. I would be remiss if I didn’t eat some crow.
The author looked at 7000 individuals and found the following: 1) The older you are when you decide to cohabit, and 2) the more thought you give to the implications of the seriousness of cohabiting, 3) the less the chances of eventual divorce. When 18 year olds make the decision to cohabit they have a 60% divorce rate, while 23 year-olds who make that decision, 30% divorce. The Hollywood scenario in which two young people look into each others’ eyes and decide to move in together generally has a bad prognosis. It is, after all,a serious business with all kinds of implications.
In light of what has been discussed, it appears that education, age, income and the ability to resist lust-driven impulses play a big part in whether cohabiting couples will divorce. Pretty much the same for marrieds. By the same token, it also gives some insight into why poor, poorly educated and very young people will divorce after cohabiting or simply divorce. Southern Baptists for example have a high divorce rate, not because they are Southern Baptists but because they tend to marry younger, when they are not well-educated and poor.
Some may be asking, “What about if I hook-up instead?” Not a good idea. Many hookups occur when people are drunk. Refer to previous comments on lust-driven impulsiveness.
Thanks for sharing, Stuart. I used to teach Family Law and found the section on divorcing couples’ profiles the most interesting part of the class.
As an attorney, you see everything, including a lot of stuff you would rather not see, which provides an interesting perspective on all of this.