I saw a bunch of pro-marriage friends were tweeting about this article from the St. Louis Federal Reserve which talks about how well married men do financially compared to single men, and using it as a reason to argue that men should get married. The article from the St. Louis Reserve doesn’t have much commentary, but this article from the far-left Washington Post by Brad Wilcox has a lot to say.

Excerpt:

Marriage has a transformative effect on adult behavior, emotional health, and financial well-being—particularly for men.

[…]Men who get married work harder and more strategically, and earn more money than their single peers from similar backgrounds. Marriage also transforms men’s social worlds; they spend less time with friends and more time with family; they also go to bars less and to church more.

[…]Our research, featured in a recent report, “For Richer, For Poorer: How Family Structures Economic Success in America,” indicates that men who are married work about 400 hours more per year  than their single peers with equivalent backgrounds. They also work more strategically: one Harvard study found that married men were much less likely than their single peers to quit their current job unless they had lined up another job.

This translates into a substantial marriage premium for men. On average, young married men, aged 28-30, make $15,900 more than their single peers, and married men aged 44-46 make $18,800 more than their single peers.

That’s even after controlling for differences in education, race, ethnicity, regional unemployment, and scores on a test of general knowledge. What’s more: the marriage premium operates for black, Hispanic, and less-educated men in much the same way as it does for men in general.

For instance, men with a high-school degree or less make at least $17,000 more than their single peers.

So, what about these differences between married men and single men? Are men able to earn more if they have a wife to support them and care for their needs? Or is it just that women prefer men who are already able to take care of themselves?

Well, in most cases, it’s the former:

2. Married men are motivated to maximize their income. For many men, this responsibility ethic translates into a different orientation toward work, more hours, and more strategic work choices. Sociologist Elizabeth Gorman finds that married men are more likely to value higher-paying jobs than their single peers.

This is partly why studies find that men increase their work hours after marrying and reduce their hours after divorcing. It’s also why married men are less likely to quit a current job without finding a new job. Indeed, they are also less likely to be fired than their single peers.

3. Married men benefit from the advice and encouragement of their wives. Although there is less research on this, we suspect that men also work harder and more strategically because they are encouraged to do so by their wives, who have an obvious interest in their success. One study appears to buttress this point, finding that men with better-educated wives earn more, even after controlling for their own education.

4. Employers like married men with children.  There is evidence that employers  prefer and promote men who are married with children, especially compared to their childless male peers and to mothers. Married men are often seen as more responsible and dedicated workers and are rewarded with more opportunities by employers. While illegal bias and long-held stereotypes appear to play a role in this historic preference, it nonetheless helps explain why married family men get paid more.

Now what’s the purpose of me writing this? Well, I’m actually NOT writing this to pressure men to get married. Why not? Because although marriage was a pretty good deal 100 years ago, it’s not as good of a deal under the current laws and policies, e.g. – no-fault divorce, the threats of false accusations, the Sexual Revolution, etc. So I wouldn’t advise a man to rush into marriage to just anybody in order to get the financial (and health) benefits of having a wife. Marriage is only safe when you choose a woman carefully.

But I am writing this to women who are being told by the culture to delay marriage, and especially to delay marriage to use your youth and beauty to “have fun” with boys who won’t commit to marriage. If a woman loves a marriage-focused man and really wants to take care of him and support him, then early marriage is one of the very best ways to really help him during the years (22-45) when it really makes a difference. Marrying a man who wants marriage when you’re still young means that he will have many, many measurable benefits.

It’s important to marry a man when the marriage has the potential to do the most good for him in areas like health, career, finances and children. Men typically don’t want to marry women who are older, because they have more sexual experience and because they get used to giving a man sex in order to get him to do what she wants. Once a woman gets used to doing this, it becomes much harder to trust a good man to lead, and to give a man respect as a leader.

In addition, men know that women never change who they are really attracted to. If a woman chooses superficially attractive men who won’t commit over and over, then even if she “settles” for a man later on, she probably won’t be able to be attracted him. Men know not to choose women who won’t value them for their traditional moral values, conservative politics and ability to perform traditional male roles like providing. Men know that a woman who feels that she is “settling” for less than she deserves is more likely to disrespect him, and to withhold sex from him.

Now pro-marriage parents and pro-marriage pastors will typically tell you that they want to let their daughters decide when to marry, so that they will be happy having “fun” before marriage, and happy being provided for after marriage. But when those women are done playing the field and in their mid-thirties, their relatives and pastors are not thinking about what men’s interests are. They’re thinking about how to get this woman married, regardless of the man’s interests. And men know that. So they aren’t going to be bullied or shamed into a marriage after the window when it benefits them has closed. If parents and pastors want their daughters married AT ALL, then they need to encourage women to be self-controlled and marriage-focused EARLY.