Turns Out, a Husband Won’t Make Me Rich

Marriage seems pretty neat, honestly.

My married friends are remarkably happy; there is always someone around to be like, “Well, you used the last of it on your oatmeal” when you complain about being out of almond milk. My parents celebrated their 34th wedding anniversary last year and they still get along. And when I was living in Brooklyn, my coupled friends spent on average well below half of what I did on rent, AND they got a partner in the deal, which did nothing to dispel my belief that there should be subsidized singles housing in the major American metropoles.

Indeed, common wisdom holds that married couples are far better off financially than singles. But Rebecca J. Rosen offers a pretty searing takedown of that belief over at The Atlantic:

And yet, as a new report from the left-of-center think tank the Center for American Progress (CAP) documents, millions and millions of married Americans continue to live in poverty. More than half (55 percent) of the nearly 28 million people in low-income families with children are in households headed by a married couple.

Rosen (who is married!) points out that while single parent households fare far worse than those with two parents (and that marriage does bring certain tangible financial benefits), marriage itself does not appear to be the magic bullet against poverty. In fact, it can sometimes create additional financial stressors, due in large part to the rising costs of childcare, which limit the earning potential of many couples.

In theory, says Rosen, “more income means less poverty (at least as captured by many statistics), and households with more adults are generally able to bring in more income.” This is not, however, the “magic of marriage, but the magic of addition.” However, if the cost of childcare or an unpredictable work schedule means one parent is bound to the home, you’re looking at a single income needing to comfortably support a family of three, four, five— a condition that is becoming less and less feasible in America.

Read the rest of Rosen’s report here.

(I still think a husband would be nice, though.)

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