A journalist in New York recently offered up a commentary about married couples having an unfair advantage over people who are not married.
She is the author of the book, entitled “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk, How My Generation Got Left Behind.” She writes that married couples who are 25-34 are worth have nearly nine times the financial worth than single people of the same age, up from a four times advantage two decades ago.
While she acknowledges that homes with two working age adults have more resources for rent, for saving to buy a house and for other things, she blames the financial gap mostly on what she says are the privileges the U.S. still bestows on married couples when it comes to taxes, workplaces, and what she calls norms and expectations. She says lives and families in America have changed with our country of 2022 not what it was in 1952. Certainly not.
But some things about being married haven’t changed and in fact could even be changing for the better according to recent studies.
A recent study has found that the quality of a marriage actually improves over the years for couples who don’t split up. Though the researchers say that marital happiness declined slightly in the early years of marriage in their study, the happiness level in marriages actually improves after about 20 years for most longtime married couples.
And there have been dozens of studies that have shown that married persons tend to live longer than their unmarried counterparts.
As someone who has been married now to his high school sweetheart for several decades, marriage, when you commit to it, is indeed an advantage that can last a lifetime.
(Photo c.e. albert)
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