Research
The Marriage Works campaign recognizes that the benefits of marriage have been quantified through decades of research. We’ve merely distilled these benefits into clear, simple messages that teens can grasp instantly. For example:
- Married people earn and save more money
- Kids of married parents do better in school
- Married people enjoy better health
- Married people make better parents
- Kids of married parents do better economically
- Kids of married parents are more likely to have long-lasting marriages
- Married people live longer
- Married people have lower rates of substance abuse
- Married people are happier
- Married people spend half as much time in hospitals
- Married people live more stable, secure lives.
- Married people live more active lifestyles.
- Married women experience lower rates of domestic violence.
- Married people have better mental health.
- Boys raised by married parents are less likely to commit crimes.
Paul R. Amato and Danielle DeBoer, 2001. “The Transmission of Marital Instability Across Generations: Relationship Skills or Commitment to Marriage?” Journal of Marriage and the Family 63 (4) November.
Ronald Angel and Jacqueline Worobey, 1988. “Single Motherhood and Children’s Health,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 29: 38-52.
Suzanne Bianchi, 1999. “The Gender Gap in the Economic Well Being of Nonresident Fathers and Custodial Mothers,” Demography 36: 195-203.
Rebecca Blank, 1997. It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty (New York: Russell Sage Foundation).
C. Cornwell and P. Rupert, 1997. “Unobservable Individual Effects: Marriage and the Earnings of Young Men,” Economic Inquiry 35 (2): 285-294.
Kingsley Davis (ed.) Contemporary Marriage: Comparative Perspectives on a Changing Institution (New York: Russell Sage Foundation).
Jeffrey Gray and Michael Vanderhart, 2000. “The Determination of Wages: Does Marriage Matter?” Linda J. Waite et al. (eds.) The Ties that Bind: Perspectives on Marriage and Cohabitation (New York: Aldine De Grutyer): 356-367.
Donna Gunther and Madeline Zavodny, 2001. “Is the Male Marriage Premium Due to Selection? The Effect of Shotgun Weddings on the Return to Marriage,” Journal of Population Economics 14: 313-328.
E. Marvis Hetherington and John Kelly, 2002. For Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered (New York: W.W. Norton): 240-47.
Jane Mauldon, 1990, “The Effects of Marital Disruption on Children’s Health,” Demography 27: 431-446.
Sara McLanahan, 2000. “Family, State, and Child Well-Being,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (1).
Mark Rank and Thomas Hirschl, 1999. “The Economic Risk of Childhood in America: Estimating the Probability of Poverty Across the Formative Years,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 61.
Catherine Ross and John Mirowsky, 1999. “Parental Divorce, Life-Course Disruption, and Adult Depression,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 61(4) November
Schoenborn CA. Marital Status and Health: United States, 1999-2002 Advance data from vital and health statistics; no. 351. Hyattsville, Maryland: National Center for Health Statistics. 2004
Pamela Smock, et al., 1999. “The Effect of Marriage and Divorce on Women’s Economic Well-Being,” American Sociological Review 64: 794-812.
On the Web
James G. Lakely, 2005, Bush hands first lady reins for youth project, THE WASHINGTON TIMES.
