The Marriage Premium
DATING & RELATIONSHIPS
“Marriage is not a noun; it’s a verb. It isn’t something you get. It’s something you do. It’s the way you love your partner every day.”
- Barbara De Angelis -
According to researchers Nicholas H. Wolfinger and W. Bradford Wilcox, the marriage rate in the United States continues to decline, and the belief that marriage entails a "lack of freedom" is becoming more entrenched, particularly among younger men. There is even a “Men Going Their Own Way” Movement, which is part of the “manosphere” of misogynistic young men who feel that feminism has corrupted society. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of American adults who have never married is at an all-time high (20%), particularly among young adults. In a research brief published in 2017 by the Institute for Family Studies, Wolfinger and Wilcox concluded that more education is needed to ensure that younger people understand the "truth about marriage." One of those truths is the so-called “marriage premium”. A large body of research shows that married men earn more than their single counterparts, have better overall satisfaction in life, including positive health benefits such as increased longevity. The main benefits of the marriage premium are as follows:
A financial return that includes increased earnings, increased assets, and increased job stability. Married men annually earn about $16,000 more than single men with comparable backgrounds. Even after accounting for the "selection effect," or the fact that higher-achieving men are more likely to marry, researchers discovered that "marriage itself increases men's earning power by 10 to 24 percent." Furthermore, males who remain married have three times the acquired wealth by their 50s, an average of $167,719 vs $48,528 for single men.
Better sex lives than single and cohabiting men. According to the National Health and Social Life Survey, 51% of married men reported being extremely emotionally satisfied with sex, compared to 39% of cohabiting men and 36% of single men.
Men who marry and stay married live nearly ten years longer than their unmarried counterparts.
Married men are roughly twice as happy: 43% of married men report being "very happy" with their lives, compared to 20% of single men and 24% of cohabiting men.
Children born to married parents outperform children born to unmarried mothers in terms of health, behavior, education, and economic outcomes. This relationship has been interpreted as arising from the selectivity of parents who marry, as well as a positive effect of marriage.
Some might ask if this is truly a “cause and effect” benefit, or if healthy, successful, cheerful people are just more likely to get married in the first place. "Marriage benefits men and women equally, and many of these benefits appear to be causal," Wolfinger said. "In other words, they are a direct benefit of marriage, not simply a benefit of happier, healthier, and wealthier men being more likely to marry in the first place."
However, there has been much research that has demonstrated that men, in a patriarchal society, are benefited much more from being married than women are. This disparity was first articulated in 1973 by sociologist J. Bernard's research. She made a compelling case that, contrary to popular belief, men were far more likely than women to thrive in marriage, particularly in terms of mental and physical health. Research indicates that, while a good relationship is associated with better health status for both men and women, men still benefit more than women. Husbands are more likely than wives to report feeling understood and validated by their partners. Women's depression is linked to a lack of such support, as well as the stress of providing it for their spouses.
Gottman's findings from his long-term marriage research are similar. He discovered that when their wives bring up relationship or other issues, husbands frequently stonewall (i.e., remove themselves mentally and emotionally from the conversation). Stonewalling behavior makes it difficult for wives to influence their husbands or even feel as if their concerns are being heard. Wives, on the other hand, are more likely to become involved in their husbands' problems. This gender disparity in willingness to be influenced has a dramatic effect. According to Gottman's research, men who refused to be influenced by their wives had an 81% chance of divorce. The lack of interest among modern women in this type of unbalanced relationship may account for recent findings that most divorces are now initiated by women.
Florencia Torche, Professor of Sociology at Stanford University and Alejandra Abufhele, Associate Researcher at the Educational Justice Center of the Catholic University of Chile examined the relative effects of the marriage premium by looking at Chile as an outlier in regards to childbirth outside of wedlock as a societal norm. According to the authors, the positive effect of marriage may be contextual, arising from the normativity of marriage in society. They put this theory to the test by looking at Chile, where marital fertility has dropped dramatically from 66% of all births in 1990 to 27% in 2016. The authors discover that the benefit of marriage for infant health was substantial in the early 1990s but declined as marital fertility became less common in society, eventually disappearing entirely in 2016. They showed that marriage has a positive effect when marital fertility is normative for the society and a weak effect when it is not.
According to the researchers, their findings do not dismiss the role that parents and their marital circumstances play in marriage – it's just not the whole story. "Both factors are important," Torche said. "Individual characteristics matter, as does the extent to which marriage is a social norm." Torche believes that the overall finding – that society as a whole can reinforce the marriage premium – is important for policymakers.
Single parents or non-heterosexuals, for example, may face stigmatization or even discrimination from family members, coworkers, neighbors, and institutions. This can lead to higher levels of stress, which is known to harm fetal development, or feelings of shame, which prevent unwed mothers from seeking help. When this occurs, the marriage premium is strengthened. "When developing and implementing social policies, we must ensure that the non-normative characteristics or statuses of the people we are attempting to assist are not portrayed as a problem," Torche said. "It not only harms individuals, but it also limits what policies can achieve."
According to studies, married men earn approximately 11% more than single men, while divorced men earn approximately 9% more than single men. This premium for marital status exists regardless of whether or not children are present. One of the most intriguing aspects of this premium is that, while it persists across all ages, it is larger for older men than for younger men. There are some competing economic explanations that exist. Of course it need not be just one of these theories that fuels marriage income disparity. There are four main potential causes that are speculated to be the causes of the marriage premium.
Bias in Ability: Marriage has a smaller causal effect on male income than appears. Even after controlling for all of the previously mentioned factors, men with higher incomes are simply more likely to be married. Perhaps income makes it easier to find a spouse, or perhaps cultural attitudes lead to both income and marriage. Marriage has no causal effect on earnings in a pure ability bias story. This selection hypothesis proposes that the characteristics that lead to workplace success (responsibility, honesty, etc.) overlap with the characteristics that lead to success in finding and keeping a spouse. In the economics literature, this hypothesis has the most empirical support.
Human Capital: This theory hypothesizes that marriage raises male earnings by making men more productive workers. Perhaps marriage plays a factor in men working more hours; perhaps it causes them to work harder per hour; perhaps it causes them to control their tempers better and express more patience and cooperation; or all of these and more. In terms of pure human capital, marriage causes men to become more productive.
The dark side of the male marriage premium might be that women are sacrificing their time in order to assist the man in being more productive. Perhaps he can “afford” to work longer hours because he has fewer or no obligation to pick up kids, and no extra chores to accomplish like grocery shopping or cooking. Anyone who has lived alone starts to realize that being your own driver, cook and maid takes up a lot of your precious time. If you can pay for a maid or order takeout, great; but a wife can provide much of the same “service benefits” that would otherwise require hiring a professional. Sure, a wife is not “free”, but she may be providing these services at her own “expense” in the sense that she may work less hours, make less money, and may be passed up for promotions in the reversal of the marriage premium - the gendered wage gap.
The specialization of gender roles is not always a negative, especially in the context of a societal norm. Some economists argue that it is more efficient for one spouse to specialize in market production (a waged job) while the other specializes in household tasks and childrearing. The more children a household supports, and the younger and more dependent the children are, the more this specialization makes sense. Stay-at-home parents will often point out that childcare is so expensive that it would eat up nearly all of the additional funds the 2nd working parent would earn, plus there is still the time-sink with transportation. So why not raise your children as you see fit - directly and in the safety and privacy of your own home?
If one spouse is in charge of household management, the other spouse can devote more effort to work-related responsibilities, thereby increasing their wage through specialization and expertise. Specialization does not need to be gendered in order for a benefit to occur, as seen in the rise of “stay at home dads” and according to this theory, the potential earning power should determine which spouse takes on the role of market production, not their gender.
Perception Equals Reality: This theory states that marriage increases male income by altering employers' perceptions of worker productivity. Discrimination occurs when an employer favors married men over single men when determining raises and promotions, either consciously or unconsciously. This discrimination may be due to an employer's belief that married men are more stable, responsible, and less likely to leave.
Alternatively, knowing that a married man must provide for his family, the employer may be more willing to raise a married man's wage, ensuring continued loyal reciprocal behavior. Like most discrimination, this statement is difficult to support with available data. In a 1994 study, economists McKinley Blackburn and Sanders Korenman found that the marriage wage premium fell by 10% between 1967 and 1988 [1]. Because the marriage wage premium has declined over time, it is possible that employer bias has played a role and that changing social norms have resulted in a decrease in the premium. For example, if marriage no longer implies a man's sole responsibility to support his family, an employer may be less likely to discriminate in favor of the married man. In other words, marriage increases employers' expectations that you will be more productive, which may lend itself to greater responsibility, increased likelihood for promotions, therefore becoming somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Structural Bias: Perhaps the HR director isn’t specifically aware they are looking more favorably at married men. However, it may be likely that said HR director is married themselves, which may cause a bias - because they might find married candidates more relatable. If people with higher incomes are more likely to be married, then it stands to reason that a larger percentage of people in leadership positions are married. When was the last time you heard of a politician who was single? Once again, if those in decision-making positions share a characteristic, they may also have an unconscious bias towards similar characteristics, making it technically a structural bias issue, and another self-fulfilling prophecy.
The evidence for men is clear: married men earn more. Is there a similar correlation for women? Unfortunately, no, not always. Although single women aged 20 to 26 earn approximately 17% more than married women, this is not the whole story. Age and marital status are just two of the many factors that can influence a woman's earnings. Education, experience, job tenure, and, especially, children are all important factors influencing a woman's earnings. After accounting for these factors, the effect of marriage on women's wages becomes statistically insignificant.
Several studies have found that marriage has little or no effect on women's earnings in and of itself. As a result, there is no agreement among women about the relationship between marriage and increased wages, as there is among men. There is, however, a link between the timing of marriage and women's earnings. A 1994 study by Timothy Chandler, Yoshinori Kamo, and James Werbel found that delaying marriage increases women's wages significantly. Although they concluded that the earnings increase associated with a woman delaying marriage dissipates over her lifetime, this relationship could indicate that a period of career development early in life is critical to a woman's wage profile. This could mean that human capital (education, training, etc.) is easier to acquire early in life, or that companies believe that young, single women will be more committed to their careers over their lifetimes.
The Influence Of Children: The timing and presence of children is one of the complications that arise when considering women's wages. While children do not appear to be a factor in the male marriage wage premium, the same cannot be said for women's wages. Children present an entirely new level of complexity for women: Not only do children necessitate a significant amount of time and effort (traditionally borne by the mother), but women frequently leave the labor force for a period of time after having children and while their children are still young.
Time spent away from work reduces a woman's earnings because she foregos valuable experience. There is the concept of a career vs a job, with the former being an interconnected web of related experience and connections within an industry or field that allows for growth and upward mobility - whereas part-time work or work that is more focused on manual labor, tends to be more stagnant in terms of wage growth. Even if a new mother continues to work, the demands of her child may put her at a disadvantage in terms of devoting time and energy to her career, and the perception bias can work against a woman where it benefits a man - her employer may not give her complex projects, promotions, or assign extra work out of consideration to her family needs.
A woman becomes visibly pregnant, displaying her condition for all to see, and in the last months of her pregnancy, acute discomfort can occur. A man whose significant other is pregnant presents no physical cues, and if he keeps his personal life private, no one at work would be the wiser regarding his family status. As a woman’s pregnancy advances, societal cues to assist and alleviate distress or discomfort may result in changing expectations for her. Even if she remains at work, her job duties might be scaled back and the mere perception that she is unable to commit to a long- or medium-term project because of her immanent birth and potential health complications could result in lower expectations and less responsibilities being assigned. Although maternal mortality has dramatically declined, there is no denying that birth is a physically taxing event, and taking time to recover benefits both the mother and child.
Women's labor-force participation and hours worked have increased dramatically over the last 40 years. The average adult female worked 43% more hours per week in 1990 than in 1970. In contrast, men's hours worked remained nearly constant over the same time period. One possible explanation for the increase in female labor hours is an increase in the monetary value of female work experience. In a 2001 study, economist Claudia Olivetti emphasized that the majority of the increase in overall hours worked by women can be attributed to the increase in hours worked by married women with young children.
In 1990, single women worked 3% more than they did in 1970. Married women, on the other hand, increased their hours worked by 96% during the same time period. The greatest increase (134%) was among married women with children under the age of six. Olivetti proposed that the logic is simple: in the past, women cut back on work during childrearing years, incurring the cost of lost work experience. However, as the value of this experience increased, so did the relative “cost” of taking time off from work. Because the cost of being absent from work has risen, more women are choosing to remain in the labor force during their childrearing years.
Simultaneously, women have tended to marry and have children later in life. Economists Elizabeth Caucutt, Nezih Guner, and John Knowles discovered in a 2002 study that women with the lowest wages have more children and have them earlier than women with the highest wages. They discovered that the age at which women have their first child rises changes 23 years for the lowest-paid women to 26.7 years for the highest-paid women.
Of course, it is difficult to generalize patterns in women's labor force participation and wages in relation to childbirth. Men are less likely to leave the labor force on average, regardless of when or whether they have children. This has not always been the case for women. As a result, the marriage wage premium for men is easier to identify but more difficult to interpret. The complicated and diverse nature of the relationship between work and childrearing for women, on the other hand, belies the presence of a marriage premium or penalty.
Revisiting Employer Discrimination: If an employer believes that marriage indicates a more responsible, stable, and long-term male employee, wouldn't the same logic apply to married women? Unfortunately, not if marriage is interpreted as a completely different social signal for women.
For example, an employer may believe that a married woman, regardless of whether she has children, is more likely to have additional household responsibilities that could interfere with her job. According to Hersch's 1991 study, childless married women spend five more hours per week on housework than childless single women. The implication is clear. If the childless married women are doing 5 more hours of chores a week than if they lived alone, then they are doing some of the man’s chores for him, thereby relieving him of such duties; so he is obligated to do a few less hours of chores than he would if he were not married. This can really add up. “Time is money”, as the popular saying goes, and so it stands to reason that every additional hour spent doing mundane errands and chores would be a deduction in terms of the hours available to devote to career, educational opportunities or even rest and social time.
If we believe that an employer has a positive bias towards married men because they have a family to support, why is the same consideration not extended to married women? Such a disparity is possible, given that men's traditional role as primary breadwinners may be what prompts the thought in the first place. The possibility that the male marriage wage premium exists due to employer discrimination does not always contradict the patterns observed for women. Thus, employer discrimination could explain the male marriage wage premium without undermining the women's wage trends.
Women with higher wages have a lower divorce rate than women with lower wages, lending credence to the theory that productive people are more likely to succeed in marriage. Aside from children, a variety of factors can influence a woman's earnings. According to research, married women, particularly those with children, are more likely to take jobs that allow them to work flexible, or part-time schedules in order to better balance work and family responsibilities. Women may accept lower wages in exchange for greater flexibility as a form of compensation. In other words, children may not lower a woman's wages; rather, she may choose to forgo higher wages in exchange for more time for child-rearing activities, which she places a higher priority on. In short, the average married woman faces far more dramatic trade-offs between her career and her family responsibilities than the average married man.
A study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, by University of Massachusetts Amherst sociology professor Michelle J. Budig and Misun Lim, sheds new light on the subject by examining the impact of marriage on the wages of both men and women. In the United States, the proportion of bread-winning mothers has risen since the 1960s. In 2011, mothers were the sole or primary source of income for 40% of all households with children under the age of 18.
According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of breadwinner mothers was only 11% in 1960. As women's wages became more important in family economies, the traditional male breadwinner model became less common across these two cohorts. In the study, it was discovered that Millennial women received a marriage wage premium if they were breadwinners, whereas Boomer women did not receive a marriage wage premium in any type of household specialization. However, it was found that dual-earner households, where men and women work equally in the market, are the highest-earning households and significantly more advantaged in socioeconomic terms.
Despite an increase in the number of female breadwinners among Millennials, this does not represent greater gender equality. First, female breadwinners among Millennials have significantly lower human capital than other married women. Notably, Millennial female breadwinners have lower education, job tenure, work experience, job stability, and hourly wage than women in dual-earner households or male-breadwinner households. Rather than representing an increase in highly successful female breadwinners, this type of household more closely resembles the dynamics of low-income households and those headed by single mothers. As a result, female breadwinners are receiving marriage premiums from a position of economic disadvantage, which affects the greater gender equity suggested by this finding parallel to male breadwinner premiums.
Millennial male breadwinners receive the highest marriage premium of the three types of households in the study (male-breadwinner, dual-earner, female breadwinner). In addition, Millennial male breadwinners are younger, less educated, and more likely to be fathers. Their wives have more children and are more likely to work irregular shifts. These findings support the gender-traditional division of household labor practiced by men and women in male-breadwinner households, and that men benefit more than their wives in this type of arrangement.
