Married people are much more financially secure and thus capable of investing in the future. They can not only share expenses, but they amortize risks and can share trade-offs. This is borne out statistically (https://www.city-journal.org/html/why-marriage-good-you-1200...), but also is painfully obvious on inspection. If you’re going to start a business with someone, would you rather do it with a Partnership Agreement in place, or an unwritten “we’ll work together long as it’s convenient for both of us” understanding?

Because married people throughout time are wealthier. Married people make more money, married millenials own 70% of all the houses millenials have bought, married people are half as likely to be in proverty. If you have to choose a way for people to get wealthy between a college degree and marriage marriage would be the better decision by far.

Even if I assume you have stats to back that up, don't you think there's an itsy bitsy chance you're operating with a huge correlation / causation fallacy here? Does getting married automatically make you more wealthy, or are people who are already wealthy more likely to get married? It seems almost obvious that if there is any causation, it's in the latter direction.

Marriage does not make people wealthy at all. Instead, wealth makes people more likely to marry.

People with real issues, whether mental or criminal or sick etcetc both don't marry and have significantly smaller income. People with issues divorce more often and have smaller income too.

Except for the fact that we know people with lower income become wealthier than peoeple with lower incomes. And we know that the poverty rate for married lower income people is twice as low as the poverty rate for singles.

> Except for the fact that we know people with lower income become wealthier than peoeple with lower incomes. And we know that the poverty rate for married lower income people is twice as low as the poverty rate for singles.

We dont know that.

Unmarried lower income people are more likely to have criminal record, more likely to have mental health issues, more likely to be the ones having hard time to keep jobs, more likely to have drugs related issues. Among women, those who got pregnant before marriage and much harder time to get any money and also are less interesting romance target for guys.

People nowdays see marriage as something you do once you are set by your standars and that strongly biases who marry.

And yet married couples are still wealthier. And we do know that.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/in-the-balance/2018/...

The fact that a college educated person earns less than what you claim is a mentally unwell, non job having drug addict is sad but no all to unobvious. Why would you think a teaching degree or psych degree major would earn more over their lifetime than a plumber or construction worker.

The fact is single women benefit the most financially from marriage since single uneducated and college educated women have a much higher than average poverty rate.

Correlation is not causation

In this case because all other effects have been minimized across culture its causation across socio-economic classes

There are economic efficiencies there that are lost. Also makes people make longer term decisions. That said it does reduce the liquidity of the labour pool by causing the “two-body problem”.