Money, Money, Money - Family economics

We've talked a lot about the impact of healthy marriages on people, but they also have a huge impact on the economy and economic well-being of families. We recently encountered a study that details just how big an impact, and for how long the connection has been known. It's super-long, super-detailed, and cites several dozen earlier studies. We've pulled some highlights for the impatient:

• Multiple studies show that married men have 20-30% higher income than their single peers, with the effect strongest for low-income and at-risk demographics.
• A stay-at-home mom has such a strong economic impact on the family that she would have to earn $120,000/year or more to break even working full time outside the home.
• Married couples file less than half of all income-tax returns, [but] they pay nearly three-quarters of all income taxes paid by the American people.
• It can be argued that the continuing housing market downturn is at least partly due to the fact that single parents (an increasing fraction of all parents) are drastically less likely to qualify for a mortgage, driving real estate demand downward.
• Two-thirds of children born out of wedlock live in poverty at any given time, compared with only 12% of those born to married couples. A child born and raised out of wedlock can expect to spend at least 50% of childhood living below poverty level vs. only 7% for a child of married parents.
• the English term economy originates from the Greek word, oikos, which means household
• Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville both wrote that the strength of the American economy (vs. that of Britain) was partly due to the colonists marrying younger and having more children than their British counterparts