Back to Materials
Why Marriage Matters - The Evidence

Why Marriage Matters - The Evidence

6^th August 2026

In brief: By their fourteenth birthday, 46 per cent of British first-born children are no longer living with both natural parents - and most of that breakdown comes from the separation of parents who never married. Marriage is where family stability is concentrated, and the evidence for that runs through every serious national study this country has: cohabiting parents are three to four times more likely to separate than married parents, their children do better at school and carry fewer emotional difficulties, married adults live longer, report better mental health and are markedly happier, and family breakdown costs the taxpayer an estimated 51 billion pounds a year. A June 2026 re-analysis of the full Millennium Cohort sample found that marriage itself accounts for half or more of the stability gap. This page sets out the evidence, and takes the strongest objection seriously.

CHILDREN DO BEST WITH MARRIED PARENTS

The central finding first. Marriage Foundation analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study - the national study following around 19,000 children born at the millennium - finds that 46 per cent of UK first-born children are not living with both natural parents by age 14, and that the break-up of unmarried parents, not divorce, accounts for the great majority of that loss - Marriage Foundation, Source of Family Breakdown, July 2023, at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/source-of-family-breakdown/. Among the parents still together at that fourteenth birthday, 84 per cent are married and only 16 in every hundred are cohabiting - from the same Marriage Foundation analysis.

A June 2026 re-analysis of the full cohort sample went further. Published by the Marriage Foundation in partnership with the Centre for Social Justice, it followed 3,324 couples for up to 14 years and found that marriage itself accounts for half or more of the stability gap - by the child's fourteenth birthday, 45 per cent of never-married parents had separated against 26 per cent of those married before conception, an effect that survives 27 statistical controls including income, education and ethnicity - Marriage Foundation, The Timing of Marriage and Union Dissolution, June 2026, at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/the-timing-of-marriage-and-union-dissolution/.

The gap holds at every income level. Using Understanding Society data across five periods from 2009 to 2018, the Marriage Foundation found cohabiting parents 3.4 times more likely to split than married parents - 6.5 per cent a year against 1.9 per cent - and the gap present in all five income quintiles. Among the very poorest parents, 8.9 per cent of cohabiting couples separated each year against 2.8 per cent of married couples. The poorest married parents were slightly more stable than the richest cohabiting parents - Marriage Foundation, Married Poor More Stable than Unmarried Rich, October 2023, at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/married-poor-more-stable-than-unmarried-rich/. Money does not explain this gap. Marriage does.

The early years tell the same story. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, using the same cohort, found that 26 per cent of cohabiting couples had separated by their child's third birthday against 7 per cent of married couples - IFS Briefing Note BN107, 2010, at https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/output_url_files/bn107.pdf. A 2022 study cited in the Centre for Social Justice's I Do? report of February 2026 found a 10 per cent chance that married couples split before their child's fifth birthday, against 28 per cent for couples who were cohabiting when the child was born - see https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf.

Stability shows up in the classroom. Marriage Foundation analysis of GCSE outcomes found that among children born to married parents, 26 per cent of boys and 19 per cent of girls failed to reach a grade 4 in English and Maths. Among children born to parents who never married, the failure rates were 39 per cent for boys and 34 per cent for girls. Among children born to single parents, 54 per cent of boys did - Marriage Foundation, Families and Education, June 2023, at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/MF-report-Families-and-Education.pdf. The Centre for Social Justice puts the point bluntly - what correlates with exam results in every ethnicity is marriage rates - two in ten children in the poorest white quintile live with married parents, against almost nine in ten in the wealthiest white quintile - reported by the Christian Institute, August 2025, at https://www.christian.org.uk/news/marriage-breakdown-leads-to-poor-gcse-results-warns-think-tank/.

It shows up in children's behaviour and mental health too. The Centre for Social Justice's 2020 report Family Structure Still Matters found that family structure has a greater bearing on children's externalising behaviours - the problems linked to school attainment, criminal justice involvement and emotional development - than education or poverty. The report is at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/newsroom/new-report-family-structure-still-matters. And the finding is not new. Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur's landmark American study found that children whose parents live apart were twice as likely to drop out of high school and one and a half times as likely to be idle in young adulthood - a pattern the authors traced across the spectrum of race, gender and class - McLanahan and Sandefur, Growing Up With a Single Parent, Harvard University Press, 1994, at https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674364080.

THE HEALTH DIVIDEND

Married people live longer. A 2025 updated systematic review and meta-analysis, pooling twelve international cohort studies with 1,785,857 participants, found single people carrying a 55 per cent higher risk of death from all causes than married people, a 52 per cent higher risk of cardiovascular death and a 14 per cent higher risk of cancer death - with the divorced carrying a 39 per cent higher all-cause risk and the widowed 43 per cent - see https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12612516/. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) Longitudinal Study - a record-linkage study of one per cent of the population of England and Wales - found raised mortality among never-married men, long-term widowers and the long-divorced, with health in early old age rising with the share of adult life spent married - Grundy and Tomassini, BMC Public Health, 2010, at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2954998/.

Cancer patients do better married. The Dana-Farber study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2013 found unmarried patients 17 per cent more likely to present with metastatic disease and 53 per cent less likely to receive appropriate therapy - see https://www.dana-farber.org/newsroom/news-releases/2013/marriage-associated-with-better-cancer-outcomes-study-finds. A 2022 systematic review in Cancer Medicine reached the same conclusion - being unmarried is associated with significantly worse overall and cancer-specific survival, with divorced and separated men the most vulnerable group - see https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9883406/. And it still shows in the newest data. A 2025 Fox Chase Cancer Center study presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting found marital status significantly affecting survival in colorectal cancer - ASCO Post, June 2025, at https://ascopost.com/news/june-2025/married-people-may-have-better-colorectal-cancer-outcomes-study-shows/.

The heart evidence agrees. The largest analysis of its kind - 3.5 million Americans, presented at the American College of Cardiology in 2014 - found married people 5 per cent less likely to have any vascular disease, with the advantage largest among those aged 50 and younger at 12 per cent - see https://www.acc.org/About-ACC/Press-Releases/2014/03/28/09/55/Alviar-Marital-Status.

And the mind. The ONS Personal Well-being Survey for April 2022 to March 2023 found self-reported health and marital status the two largest contributors to life satisfaction. Only 3.3 per cent of married people reported low life satisfaction, against 6.7 per cent of single adults, 9.2 per cent of the divorced and 12 per cent of the separated - ONS, at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/measuringnationalwellbeing/april2022tomarch2023. The ONS's 2018 study of loneliness found people who were married or in a civil partnership significantly less likely to report feeling lonely than any other marital group, with the single and widowed at particular risk - ONS, April 2018, at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/lonelinesswhatcharacteristicsandcircumstancesareassociatedwithfeelinglonely/2018-04-10. The Centre for Social Justice's analysis of 27,126 British adults found cohabiting adults just over half as likely to be lonely as single adults, and married people less likely still - CSJ, Lonely Nation, May 2024, at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/CSJ-Lonely_Nation.pdf.

Then there is happiness itself. Sam Peltzman's analysis of America's long-running General Social Survey, The Anatomy of Marital Happiness, found a wide gap of around 30 points between married and unmarried respondents - he calls it the marital premium. The paper is at https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/law_and_economics/1038/. Gallup's polling found 61 per cent of married American adults aged 25 to 50 thriving in 2023, against 45 per cent of those who had never married - a gap that has run between 10 and 24 points in every year since 2009, per https://news.gallup.com/poll/642590/married-americans-thriving-higher-rates-unmarried-adults.aspx. That is American data - but the ONS figures above show the same pattern holding here.

THE ECONOMIC CASE

The marriage gap is now an engine of inequality. The Marriage Foundation's March 2025 analysis found 71 per cent of parents of newborns in the highest earning group are married, against 35 per cent in the lowest earning classified group - a 36 percentage point gap, rising to as much as 51 points against the unclassified residual group, and double the gap of 1988 - Marriage Foundation, The Marriage Gap, March 2025, at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MF-paper-Marriage-gap-March-2025.pdf. The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that men from the poorest fifth of families were almost twice as likely never to have married as men from high-income backgrounds, and that the women who married or settled with men from richer backgrounds earned 73 per cent more than those with men from poorer families, compounding household inequality across generations - IFS, August 2017, at https://ifs.org.uk/news/men-poor-backgrounds-have-lower-earnings-and-are-twice-likely-be-single-those-rich-families.

The American wealth data shows what is at stake for a household. Among American men aged 51 to 60, median financial assets for the stably married stand at 399,000 dollars, against 180,000 dollars for remarried men and just 12,800 dollars for single men, with similar gaps for women. Household income follows - around 90,000 dollars for married women, against 67,500 dollars for cohabiting women and 38,000 dollars for single women, and the gaps are similar for men - figures assembled in Brad Wilcox's Get Married, set out in the Independent Review's assessment, 2024, at https://www.independent.org/tir/2024-fall/get-married/.

Lone parenthood and poverty travel together. Lone parents were 12 times more likely to be on income support and 8 times more likely to live in a workless household than couple parents - Marriage Foundation, Why Marriage Must Be Central to Any Policy on Poverty, March 2021, at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/why-marriage-must-be-central-to-any-policy-on-poverty/. The Family Resources Survey for 2023-24 found 34 per cent of lone parents had no savings at all, with a further 25 per cent holding less than 100 pounds - Department for Work and Pensions, published January 2026, at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-resources-survey-financial-year-2023-to-2024/family-resources-survey-financial-year-2023-to-2024.

Then there is the bill. The Relationships Foundation's Cost of Family Failure Index puts the cost of family failure to the taxpayer at 51 billion pounds a year, up from 37 billion pounds when the exercise began - 2018 update, the most recent published, at https://relationshipsfoundation.org/publications/pressreleases/cost-family-failure-2018-update/. Against that, the state's main recognition of marriage in the income-tax system is the Marriage Allowance - a transfer of 1,260 pounds of personal allowance worth up to 252 pounds a year to a basic-rate couple, per HM Revenue and Customs at https://www.gov.uk/marriage-allowance. A 252 pound thank-you, set against a 51 billion pound bill. That is the current state of policy.

THE STABILITY GAP IS THE MECHANISM

Why does one institution carry so much of the weight? Because marriage is where commitment is declared and witnessed - and the stability that follows is what every other advantage on this page flows through. It is also the institution that binds a child's own mother and father to each other, and to the child, in law and in daily life. Every other family structure loosens that link. Marriage holds it.

Cohabiting parents account for around 19 per cent of couples with children but roughly half of all family breakdown - Marriage Foundation briefing note, 2019, at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/MF-briefing-note-proportion-of-family-breakdown-from-cohabitation-v2.pdf. Divorce is no longer the primary driver. Divorce rates have been falling for decades while cohabiting relationships remain substantially riskier, the Marriage Foundation noted in May 2024 at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/married-couple-families-still-the-majority-finds-ons/ - around 75 per cent of married or civil-partnered parents stay together as their children grow up, against 30 per cent of cohabiting parents.

The pattern is international. The Institute for Family Studies found cohabiting relationships three to five times more likely to dissolve than marriages across Europe - and no country studied in which the cohabiting risk fell below twice the divorce risk of the married - see https://ifstudies.org/blog/cohabitation-marriage-and-union-instability-in-europe/. A Social Trends Institute report across more than 100 countries found marriage associated with greater family stability worldwide - and the UK among the worst countries in the world for family breakdown - as the Christian Institute reported in February 2017 at https://www.christian.org.uk/news/children-better-married-parents-confirms-new-report/.

And the common objection to marriage does not survive the numbers. The claim that half of all marriages end in divorce is a myth - of couples who married in 2013, just 16.8 per cent had divorced by their tenth anniversary, a lower share at the same point than those who married in 1998, continuing what the ONS calls a broader pattern of decreasing proportions of marriages ending in divorce within the first ten years. More than 83 per cent of those marriages were still standing at ten years - ONS, Divorces and Dissolutions in England and Wales: 2023, at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/divorce/bulletins/divorcesinenglandandwales/2023. Marriage is far more resilient than popular culture suggests.

DOES MARRIAGE CAUSE ANY OF THIS?

The objection deserves a fair hearing, because it is partly right. People who marry are on average older, better educated and better off, and some of the marriage advantage reflects who marries rather than what marrying does. The Institute for Fiscal Studies made the strongest version of this case in its 2010 Briefing Note 107, at https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/output_url_files/bn107.pdf. In the raw data, 26 per cent of cohabiting parents had separated by their child's third birthday against 7 per cent of married parents. Controlling for basics such as the child's gender and birth year, the IFS found the gap "slightly reduced, but remains large and statistically significant". Accounting for the fuller differences in parental characteristics, it was "substantially reduced" - yet couples who were cohabiting when their child was born remained 16.7 percentage points more likely to experience a period of separation before the child turned three. Controls shrink the gap. They do not remove it.

The best modern studies are designed to answer exactly this. A landmark 2012 twin study by Burt and colleagues in the Journal of Family Psychology, at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3645280/ - comparing identical twins with different marital histories, which strips out genes and upbringing at a stroke - found marriage-like relationships "causally protective against internalising and externalising problems". A 2018 study in the European Economic Review, using grouped fixed-effects models that allow for unobserved differences in innate health, still found a health difference of around five percentage points at ages 55 to 59 - evidence, its authors judged, that there might be a protective effect of marriage at older ages - see https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7597938/. And Wilson and Oswald, surveying the longitudinal studies across many journals and disciplines, drew the judgement that there is persuasive longitudinal evidence for the health benefits of relationships like marriage - IZA Discussion Paper 1619, 2005, at https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/1619/.

The money evidence has its own twin studies. Kate Antonovics and Robert Town, writing in the American Economic Review in 2004, compared married identical twins with their unmarried co-twins. The estimated wage premium did not fall within twin pairs but rose, from 19 per cent in the ordinary data to approximately 26 per cent, and the authors concluded that little, if any, of the premium is due to the selection of more productive men into marriage. The paper is at https://repository.upenn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/2cc7b4bf-4546-4f5f-950c-e92872b17898/content. Reviews of the wider wage literature reach a similar balance from ordinary survey data, attributing around one third of the raw marriage differential to selection - which leaves most of the premium standing - see https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3043605/.

The strongest dissenting voice deserves naming. The psychologist Bella DePaulo has spent two decades arguing that the benefits of marriage are a myth - her collected critiques run under headings such as "Debunking the myth that married people live longer" and "On getting married and (not) getting happier" - see https://belladepaulo.com/2023/10/everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-benefits-of-marrying-is-wrong-the-evidence/. Her case is that the studies behind claims like those on this page do not show what they are said to show. The strongest form of any such challenge is selection - people cannot be randomly assigned to marry - and twin designs, fixed-effects models and the June 2026 full-sample re-analysis exist precisely to meet it. They reach the same verdict as the simple comparisons.

Then, in June 2026, the selection argument was tested on its own ground. The Marriage Foundation re-analysis of the full Millennium Cohort sample - correcting earlier analyses that had rested on only three quarters of the sample - found that marriage itself accounts for half or more of the stability gap between married and cohabiting parents, after 27 controls - see https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/the-timing-of-marriage-and-union-dissolution/. The question is not closed - no single re-analysis closes it. But for years the selection verdict was assumed to rest on the full weight of the data, and it rested on three quarters of it.

For families and for policy, the remaining argument matters less than it looks. If marriage merely selects committed people, commitment still gathers there. If it changes people, the result is the same. Either way, marriage is where stability is concentrated, and a serious country builds on it.

PEOPLE STILL WANT IT

Britons have not stopped wanting marriage. Among unmarried adults under 30, 86 per cent of women and 80 per cent of men say they want to marry, per survey data in the Centre for Social Justice's I Do? report of February 2026 at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf. Three quarters of Gen Z adults - 75 per cent - want to marry, per an Opinium survey of 2,000 people aged 18 to 27 at https://www.charlesrussellspeechlys.com/en/insights/expert-insights/private-client/2025/gen-z-and-milestone-planning/. Yet on current trends only 58 per cent of Gen Z women and 56 per cent of Gen Z men will ever marry - Marriage Foundation analysis of ONS data, December 2024, at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/the-collapse-of-marriage-among-gen-z/. The gap between what a generation wants and what it will get is the gap the Coalition for Marriage exists to close.

Marriage rewards the perseverance it asks for. Research by Linda Waite and colleagues - Does Divorce Make People Happy?, Institute for American Values, 2002, at https://www.healthymarriageinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/UnhappyMarriages.pdf - found that almost two thirds of unhappy spouses who stuck with their marriage were happily married five years later. Among those who had rated their marriages very unhappy, 78 per cent were. The same study found that unhappy spouses who divorced and remarried were, on average, no happier than those who stayed. And its authors were clear about what these unhappy seasons involved - serious pressures including alcoholism, infidelity, verbal abuse, emotional neglect, depression, illness and work reversals, not trivial discontent. That finding is about perseverance through difficulty. It is not a counsel to remain in danger - where a marriage involves abuse, separation may be right and necessary.

WHAT WE BELIEVE

Marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman - the gold standard for families and society. The evidence on this page is why the Coalition for Marriage holds that conviction with confidence rather than nostalgia - no other relationship structure consistently matches what marriage does for the family inside it, or for the country around it.

We do not denigrate anyone. Many people in other family structures lead flourishing lives, and many carry burdens they did not choose. But we serve nobody by pretending the evidence says something it does not. At population level, marriage is associated with better outcomes for adults and substantially better outcomes for children - and with a lower bill for the state. The retreat from marriage has fallen hardest on the poorest families, who stood to gain the most from it.

So we ask policymakers for three things. Remove the couple penalty in the welfare system that punishes the poorest couples for marrying. Invest in marriage preparation and support. And be willing to say in public what the data says in private - marriage matters. The desire for it is alive in the young, and the institution keeps refusing to die. What Britain's families need is a state that stops treating the gold standard as a lifestyle choice, and parents and churches willing to hand on what they know.

Join us. Receive the Coalition for Marriage briefings at https://www.c4m.org.uk/subscribe, and support the campaign at https://www.c4m.org.uk/donate.

RELATED PAGES ON C4M.ORG.UK

/marriage-support/marriage-facts-and-figures - the key statistics on marriage in the United Kingdom /what-is-marriage - the nature, purpose and definition of marriage /marriage-and-childrens-wellbeing - how family structure shapes children's outcomes /cohabitation-vs-marriage - the evidence compared /marriage-a-public-good - the case for marriage as public policy /how-to-strengthen-your-marriage - practical help for married couples

KEY SOURCES

Marriage Foundation, The Timing of Marriage and Union Dissolution (with the Centre for Social Justice), June 2026. https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/the-timing-of-marriage-and-union-dissolution/ Marriage Foundation, Source of Family Breakdown. https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/source-of-family-breakdown/ Marriage Foundation, Married Poor More Stable than Unmarried Rich, October 2023. https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/married-poor-more-stable-than-unmarried-rich/ Marriage Foundation, The Marriage Gap, March 2025. https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MF-paper-Marriage-gap-March-2025.pdf Marriage Foundation, Families and Education, June 2023. https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/MF-report-Families-and-Education.pdf Goodman, A. and Greaves, E., Cohabitation, Marriage and Relationship Stability, IFS Briefing Note BN107, 2010. https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/output_url_files/bn107.pdf Centre for Social Justice, I Do?, February 2026. https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf Centre for Social Justice, Family Structure Still Matters, 2020. https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/newsroom/new-report-family-structure-still-matters Centre for Social Justice, Lonely Nation, May 2024. https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/CSJ-Lonely_Nation.pdf McLanahan, S. and Sandefur, G., Growing Up With a Single Parent, Harvard University Press, 1994. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674364080 Updated systematic review and meta-analysis, marital status and cardiovascular, cancer and all-cause mortality, 2025. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12612516/ Grundy, E.M.D. and Tomassini, C., Marital history, health and mortality among older men and women in England and Wales, BMC Public Health, 2010. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2954998/ Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Marital Status and Survival in Patients With Cancer, Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2013. https://www.dana-farber.org/newsroom/news-releases/2013/marriage-associated-with-better-cancer-outcomes-study-finds Cancer Medicine, marital status and survival in cancer patients: systematic review and meta-analysis, 2022. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9883406/ ASCO Post, Married People May Have Better Colorectal Cancer Outcomes, June 2025. https://ascopost.com/news/june-2025/married-people-may-have-better-colorectal-cancer-outcomes-study-shows/ American College of Cardiology, Marital Status and Cardiovascular Disease in 3.5 Million Patients, 2014. https://www.acc.org/About-ACC/Press-Releases/2014/03/28/09/55/Alviar-Marital-Status Office for National Statistics, Personal Well-being in the UK: April 2022 to March 2023. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/measuringnationalwellbeing/april2022tomarch2023 Office for National Statistics, Loneliness - What characteristics and circumstances are associated with feeling lonely, April 2018. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/lonelinesswhatcharacteristicsandcircumstancesareassociatedwithfeelinglonely/2018-04-10 Office for National Statistics, Divorces and Dissolutions in England and Wales: 2023. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/divorce/bulletins/divorcesinenglandandwales/2023 Peltzman, S., The Anatomy of Marital Happiness, University of Chicago. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/law_and_economics/1038/ Gallup, Married Americans Thriving at Higher Rates than Unmarried Adults, 2024. https://news.gallup.com/poll/642590/married-americans-thriving-higher-rates-unmarried-adults.aspx Burt, S.A. and colleagues, Does marriage inhibit antisocial behaviour?, Journal of Family Psychology, 2012. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3645280/ European Economic Review, Marriage and Health: Selection, Protection, and Assortative Mating, 2018. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7597938/ Wilson, C.M. and Oswald, A.J., How Does Marriage Affect Physical and Psychological Health?, IZA Discussion Paper 1619, 2005. https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/1619/ Antonovics, K. and Town, R., Are All the Good Men Married? Uncovering the Sources of the Marital Wage Premium, American Economic Review, 2004. https://repository.upenn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/2cc7b4bf-4546-4f5f-950c-e92872b17898/content Review of the marriage wage premium literature. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3043605/ DePaulo, B., The Evidence collection. https://belladepaulo.com/2023/10/everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-benefits-of-marrying-is-wrong-the-evidence/ Wilcox, B., Get Married, reviewed in the Independent Review, 2024. https://www.independent.org/tir/2024-fall/get-married/ Relationships Foundation, Cost of Family Failure Index, 2018 update. https://relationshipsfoundation.org/publications/pressreleases/cost-family-failure-2018-update/ Department for Work and Pensions, Family Resources Survey: Financial Year 2023 to 2024, January 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-resources-survey-financial-year-2023-to-2024/family-resources-survey-financial-year-2023-to-2024 HM Revenue and Customs, Marriage Allowance. https://www.gov.uk/marriage-allowance Waite, L. and colleagues, Does Divorce Make People Happy?, Institute for American Values, 2002. https://www.healthymarriageinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/UnhappyMarriages.pdf