5 Reasons Why Marriage Is Still the Best Option

Young people may be pooh-poohing the idea of settling down, but the benefits around getting hitched can’t be denied

Scott Adams,

AARP

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Published June 01, 2023

a couple embraces while they walk along a beach

Stocksy

Growing old is not for the faint of heart. I learned this firsthand recently after spending more than a month in a hospital due to a spinal injury that required additional months of rehabilitation and at-home care. I don’t know how I would have handled my recovery without the love and care I received from my wife and family.

Falling in love is magical. But finding your forever person is not always easy. We don’t usually get to pick our lobster from the grocery store fish tank.

As it turns out, when you do find “the one,” there is a winning formula for success that we all learned at the school playground. It goes, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage.”

We looked at the data to find out why love, then marriage, then children, create healthier lifestyles, greater stability and a more successful community. Here is what we found:

1. Married-parent families tend to have higher incomes than single-parent families

According to a study by the Brookings Institution, this comes down to simple addition: Two people tend to earn more than one. Kind of like how two hands are better than one or how carpooling saves gas.

2. Married couples tend to achieve more of the goals they set for themselves

Making a serious commitment “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health” creates purpose. And that purpose leads to results that statistically surpass those who remain single or cohabitate. As a result, married couples benefit from collaboration and sharing thoughts and ideas that help them collectively make better decisions. It’s a win/win situation.

3. Marriage benefits overall society

According to the American Enterprise Institute report, “Strong Families, Prosperous States” marriage plays a “particularly important role” in getting young men to participate in the labor force. Married families also have fewer members who are involved in violent crime and children living below the poverty rate. Studies clearly show that family planning at an earlier age improves outcomes for children.

4. Marriage is better for your health

Benjamin Franklin famously advised that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Although Franklin was focused on fire prevention, the same adage applies to marriage.

“Being unmarried is one of the greatest risks that people voluntarily subject themselves to,” Bernard L.Cohen and I-Sing Lee wrote in the 1979 paper, “A Catalog of Risks,” which looked at risks impacting mortality rates. They concluded that the benefit of marital status applied to men and women, white and non-white across all age ranges.

More recently, data show that married people live longer lives, have better health and experience a lower risk of STDs and reduced drug and alcohol dependency.

5. Married couples have higher rates of satisfaction and fidelity and lower rates of conflict

Data shows that people who take a vow of marriage don’t go into it with a preconceived notion that when the going gets tough, they can just get going. As a result, married couples report greater frequency of communication and speak more openly about emotional challenges than cohabitating couples or singles.

Ambiance Matchmaking adds that married couples also experience higher levels of serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter that maintains mood balance and decreases depression, anxiety and anger. Plus, married couples have sex more frequently, which is known to reduce aging and improve heart, respiratory and muscular function.

Although we’ve been told since the 1970s that nearly 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, the rate of divorce is declining. Part of that may be because first-time marriages are occurring at a later age, which may be contributing to the decline in the number of children being born.

Nonetheless, some millennials have figured out the marriage formula. According to Coldwell Banker, millennial millionaires are nearly twice as likely to be married as their peers and more than three times as likely to own a home. Now all they need is the baby carriage.

Share Your Experience: What is the biggest benefit you’ve enjoyed from your own marriage? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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Scott Adams is the syndicated host of The Scott Adams Show, owner & station manager of a national radio station and the founder of the nonprofit Bugle Call, Inc. Scott is also a proud member of the Upper Mattaponi Native American Indian Tribe and the son of former Chief Raymond Adams. A native of the Ohio Valley, Scott currently resides with his wife in Arlington, Va.