1. The mean net worth of married-couple households ($187,102) was substantially higher than that of cohabitant households ($77,093), male-headed households ($92,045) and female-headed households ($48,726), which was the lowest of all family structures.
Data from Wave 8 of the 2001 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) Panel
Source
“Asset Holding and Net Worth among Households with Children: Differences by Household Type”
Grinstein-Weiss, Michal
Yeo, Yeong Hun, Zhan, Min; and Pajarita, Charles
Children and Youth Services Review Vol. 30, Number . , 2008. Page(s) 62-78.
2. For respondents at age thirty-one, religious attendance and the importance of religion were no longer significantly associated with views on divorce. Similarly, at age thirty-one, respondents with no religious affiliation were no longer less likely to support a breadwinner-housewife model than those affiliated with a mainline Protestant tradition.
Data came from the Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children, a 31-year long study. The analytical sample used data from 1980, 1985, and 1993, when respondents’ religious information was collected.
Source
“Religious Identity and Family Ideologies in the Transition to Adulthood”
Pearce, L.D.
Thronton, A.
Journal of Marriage and Family Vol. 69, Number . , 2007. Page(s) 1227-1243.
3. Compared with peers who had not experienced parental divorce, young adult children whose parents had divorced were more likely to report that they felt close to only one parent or did not feel close to either parent.
Data come from the Martial Instability over the Life Course survey, a 17-year longitudinal study. The sample is nationally representative of married individuals, and their spouses, under the age of 55 in 1980. In 1992 and 1997, the study surveyed young adult children of the married respondents. The analytical sample in this study consists of 604 young adult children of the study’s married respondents.
Source
“Parents’ Discord and Divorce, Parent-Child Relationships and Subjective Well-Being in Early Adulthood: Is Feeling Close to Two Parents Always Better than Feeling Close to One?”
Soboleswki, Juliana M.
Amato, Paul R.
Social Forces Vol. 85, Number 3. March , 2007. Page(s) 1105-1124
4. Compared to teens in intact families, those in single- and cohabiting-parent families had, on average, lower expectations of marriage in their future. Teens in stepfamilies were no more or less likely to expect marriage in their future compared to peers in intact families.
Data came from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study, which collected data on 7th, 9th, and 11th graders enrolled in schools in Lucas County, Ohio in 2000. The analytical sample consisted of 1,293 adolescents.
Source
“The Changing Institution of Marriage: Adolescents’ Expectation to Cohabit and to Marry”
Manning, Wendy D.
Journal of Marriage and Family Vol. 69, Number . August, 2007. Page(s) 559-575.
5. Youths whose parents talked to them about what is right and wrong in sexual behavior were significantly more likely to be abstinent than peers whose parents did not.
Youth Asset Survey of 1083 youth
Source
“Parental Communication and Youth Sexual Behaviour”
Aspy, Cheryl B.
Vesely, Sara K., Oman, Roy F.; Rodine, Sharon; Marshall, LaDonna; McLeroy, Ken
Journal of Adolescence Vol. 30, Number . , 2007. Page(s) 449-466.
6. Overall, married elderly individuals had lower risk of morality compared to elderly individuals who were not married (a summary relative risk [RR] of 0.88 based on 53 separate datasets). The relative risk of morality for married individuals was the same for married women as it was for married men (RR of 0.88 for men, RR of 0.90 for women). Analyzed by specific marital status, compared to currently married individuals, the relative risk of mortality was 1.11 for never married individuals; 1.11 for widowed individuals; and 1.16 for divorced or separated individuals.
A meta-analysis, the study pooled results from 29 papers. The main analysis, comparing married individuals to non-married individuals, contained 53 separate comparisons (or datasets). Of the 53 comparisons, 18 were based on elderly populations in the U.S.; 7 in Finland; 6 Israel; 4 in Canada; 3 in Denmark and Japan; 2 in France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom; and one in Australia, Bangladesh, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Taiwan. The analytical sample consisted of more than 256,243 individuals. The elderly populations ranged in age from 55 to 93 years, and the length of the follow-ups in these 53 comparisons ranged from 1.3 to 20 years.
Source
“Marital Status and Mortality in the Elderly: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”
Manzoli, Lamberto
Social Science and Medicine Vol. 64, Number . , 2007. Page(s) 77-94.
7. Premarital cohabitation was associated with a lower level of marital satisfaction, while being married in a religious setting was associated with a higher level of with marital satisfaction.
Data came from the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative Statewide Baseline Survey, which surveyed individuals in Arkansas, Kansas, Texas as well as Oklahoma in 2001. To improve how representative the survey is of the general U.S. population, the researchers weighted the sample by education, race, gender and age (separately within each state) based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The size of the analytical samples ranged from 1,977 to 2,533 individuals. Overall, 54 percent of the respondents were women; 4 percent were African American, 5 percent Latino, and 4 percent Native American.
Source
“Premarital Education, Marital Quality, and Marital Stability: Findings from a Large, Random Household Survey”
Stanley, Scott M.
Amato, Paul R., Johnson,Christine A. and Markman, Howard
Journal of Family Psychology Vol. 20, Number 1. , 2006. Page(s) 17-126..
8. Compared with unmarried low-income households, married low-income households, had, on average, (1) higher savings goals (13 percent higher in the amount they hoped to save), (2) higher monthly deposit values (41 percent higher), (3) more deposits (6 percent more), and (4) higher incomes (33 percent higher). However, controlling for race and income, these differences were no longer present.
Data came from the American Dream Demonstration. Half of the participants fell between the federal poverty line and 200% of the poverty line, and the other half were at or below the federal poverty line (N = 2,364).
Source
“Saving Performance in Individual Development Accounts: Does Marital Status Matter?”
Grinstein-Weiss, M.
Sherraden, M.
Journal of Marriage and Family Vol. 68, Number . , 2006. Page(s) 192 – 204
9. Having grandparents who divorced was associated with having a lower level of educational attainment, a greater likelihood of marital discord, and a poorer quality of parent-child relationship. This association held even if the grandparents’ divorce occurred before the grandchild was born.
The study was based on a 20-year (1980-2000)longitudinal study of Marital Instability Over the Life Course. It consisted of 2,033 married persons, 55 years of age or less in 1980 and 691 adult offspring (19 years of age or older). Offspring were interviewed in 1992, 1997, and 2000.
Source
“The Long Reach of Divorce: Divorce and Child Well-Being Across Three Generations”
Amato, Paul R.
Cheadle, Jacob
Journal of Marriage and Family Vol. 67, Number 1. February, 2005. Page(s) 191-206.
** Strong proof of generational curses.
10. Likewise, individuals whose parents divorced while growing up were 21 percent less likely to own a home and 41 percent less likely to own stocks compared to those who grew up in intact families. Individuals who lived with extended families while growing up were 34 percent less likely to own a home and 55 percent less likely to own stocks as adults compared to individuals who did not live with extended families while growing up. However, as family of origin income increased, the ability for number of siblings to reduce the likelihood of homeownership declined.
Data came from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY79), a nationally representative survey, from 1979, 1985-1998. The analytic consisted of 3,053 individuals between the ages of 31 and 38 in 1998.
Source
“Race, Family Structure, and Wealth: The Effect of Childhood Family on Adult Asset Ownership”
Keister, L. A.
Sociological Perspectives Vol. 47, Number . , 2004. Page(s) 161 – 187.