For Immediate Release
June 9, 2004
Contact: Audrey Light, The Ohio State University, 614-292-0493, light.20@osu.edu.
Marriage or Cohabitation: Women Gain Financially, Men Break Even (June 2004)
(Columbus, Ohio) When they marry or cohabit, women see their needs adjusted household income increase by more than 50 percent on average, while men only break even, according to an article published in the latest issue of the journal Demography.
"There's a lot of evidence that suggests that married people are better off than others in a variety of ways, including financially," said Audrey Light, an economist at Ohio State University. "But if you examine the transition from being single to forming a partnership, you find significant economic benefits for women and virtually no benefit for men."
Although the breadwinning man and the homemaking woman are no longer the norm, on average men still earn more than women, she explained. Because it costs less to maintain one household instead of two, when a man and woman form a single household — pooling their income and sharing expenses — she's the one who sees the economic gain.
The average woman can expect to receive virtually identical household income gains, whether she moves in with or marries a man, reports Light.
"Men on average neither gain nor lose financially when they form a union — whether it's marriage or cohabitation," she said.
Light based her study on about 9800 baby boomers (born 1957 through 1964) tracked by the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, focusing on their living arrangements and household income between 1979 and 2000. Her calculations are adjusted to take into account household expenses per adult and the relatively different needs of additional adults and children in a household.
There's evidence that marriage makes men slightly more productive in the workplace than their non-married peers. But the additional productivity doesn't translate into enough extra income to offset the needs of a larger household, she noted.
In the future, if women's earnings increase to reach the level of men's, then on average marriage or cohabitation will offer her less financial gain and him more, according to Light.
Demography is the peer-reviewed journal published by the Population Association of America.
The full article, titled "Gender Differences in the Marriage and Cohabitation Income Premium", is available on www.prb.org/cpipr. Click on articles from journal Demography. Or call the Center for Public Information on Population Research, 202-939-5414. The Center, a project of the Population Reference Bureau, is funded by the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development.