Inflation widens marriage advantage

[WendyBG]

“Two can live as cheaply as one” isn’t actually accurate, but it is true that per-person living expenses are lower for room-mates (usually spouses) than for singles. The largest expense (housing) is split. Also, a spouse provides important support in case of emergency.

This has been known basically forever, but the size of the marriage advantage is amazingly high among today’s young adults and growing.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/inflation-widens-married-couple…

**Inflation Widens Married Couples’ Money Lead Over Their Single Friends**
**Rapidly rising prices and more than two years of living in a pandemic increase the financial stress on those without pooled assets**

**By Julia Carpenter, The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 15, 2022**

**It is better, financially, to be married than single, as has almost always been the case. But the money gap between young married couples and singles has widened, thanks to inflation and rising home prices.**

**The median net worth of married couples 25 to 34 years old was nearly nine times as much as the median net worth of single households in 2019, according to the most recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. In 2016, married households’ median net worth was four times as much. And now, after a spell of rapid inflation and more than two years of pandemic living, single people are getting left further behind, say economists at the Fed and elsewhere....**

**Over the past four decades, the number of sole-person households has nearly doubled, according to data from Freddie Mac. And by delaying marriage, many now struggle to access money milestones at the ages previous generations achieved them. ... Housing affordability in June 2022 hit its worst level since June 1989, and home prices are up 44% over the past two years...** [end quote]

The Macro impact of financially-inefficient single living is that the sole-person households will have less to spend on consumer goods and services since they are (in aggregate) spending more on housing. They will also be stuck on the rental treadmill since starter homes are being bid out of affordability for a single paycheck.

Of course, marriage isn’t the only way to access the benefits of shared living. But it’s by far the commonest. And in an emergency, a spouse is more likely to pitch in than a room-mate.

Wendy

[intercst]

It is better, financially, to be married than single, as has almost always been the case. But the money gap between young married couples and singles has widened, thanks to inflation and rising home prices.

Absolutely!

I often have people tell me. “Sure, it’s easier to retire early if you’re single.”

Not true. A married couple with two incomes and no kids should be able to retire even earlier since they only have to fund the expenses of one household. They should be able to save even more for retirement.

That said, 40% to 50% of marriages end in divorce, so there may be tremendous costs on the back end.

intercst

[WendyBG]

< 40% to 50% of marriages end in divorce>

There is a financial divide in divorce just as there is in many other life factors.

Only 30% of middle and upper class adults have ever been divorced.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-marriage-divide-how-and-why-w…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8179854/

**Socioeconomic Status and Intimate Relationships**
**by Benjamin R. Karney, Annu Rev Psychol. 2021 Jan 4; 72: 391–414.**

**The ways that couples form and manage their intimate relationships at higher and lower levels of socioeconomic status (SES) have been diverging steadily over the past several decades. At higher levels, couples postpone marriage and child-birth to invest in education and careers, but eventually marry at high rates and have relatively low risk for divorce. At lower levels, couples are more likely to cohabit and give birth prior to marriage, and less likely to marry at all....**

**Data from the census and long-running surveys like the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) indicate that women with a college degree are between 12% and 17% more likely to marry than women who did not graduate from college, and that this gap has been widening over time. Similar data suggest that college educated women who do marry are up to 40% less likely to divorce than married women who did not complete college, and this gap has also been widening over time....** [end quote]

Key Similarities and Differences between Intimate Relationships at Higher and Lower levels of SES (Socioeconomic Status) are tabulated. They are qualitatively and quantitatively different.

Reasons for divorce
High SES: More emotional: lack of communication, incompatibility, lack of love. After divorce, Likely to remarry and recover financially.

Low SES: More instrumental: physical abuse, substance abuse, failure to contribute. After divorce, Less likely to remarry, financial consequences are lasting.

The factors that lead to low or high SES also impact the likelihood of divorce and the aftermath.

Wendy

[Hawkwin]

Of course, marriage isn’t the only way to access the benefits of shared living. But it’s by far the commonest. And in an emergency, a spouse is more likely to pitch in than a room-mate.

This reminds me of the increase of plutonic [and now more common same-sex] marriages:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/01/fashion/weddings/from-bes…

Snip:

Kim Reiter, 40, never considered marrying a best friend, though she considers herself to be nonbinary, aromantic and bisexual. Ms. Reiter, who lives in Dortmund, Germany, and is unemployed, tried OkCupid in 2013 and found her husband, who is aromantic and asexual.

They quickly became platonic best friends and married in 2018.

“Our daily life is that of best friends: We talk and laugh a lot, watch movies, but there is almost no physical element in it,” Ms. Reiter said. “Sometimes we hug or give massages to each other, and every night we have our good-night kiss, but we have separate bedrooms. We are the most important people in each other’s lives.”

---

There are a lot of financial benefits to marriage, especially for the retired that wish to remain platonic. The ability to pass wealth completely tax free to “a friend”, as well as the ability to share your social security benefits can be massive - and unlike normal Spousal SS benefits, you only need to be married 9 months to receive Survivor SS benefits.

[intercst]

Hawkwin,

Kim Reiter, 40, never considered marrying a best friend, though she considers herself to be nonbinary, aromantic and bisexual. Ms. Reiter, who lives in Dortmund, Germany, and is unemployed, tried OkCupid in 2013 and found her husband, who is aromantic and asexual.

Let’s hope the Tesla Robot is the same.

Elon Musk reveals more details about Tesla Robot, sees people gifting it to elderly parents
https://electrek.co/2022/08/15/elon-musk-reveals-more-detail…

intercst

[flyerboys]

In my last two years of college I ran a boarding house, and in comparison to dorm living (let alone Frat House) it was fantastically cost efficient as well as far more socially sane. I leased a full floor of an old rat trap of a tenement buidling in Somerville, MA, in those days a pleasant walk into disreputable historical working class digs from the expensive and respectable edifices near Harvard Law School and Harvard College. I did some minor remodeling and housed and fed 12 men with nice accomocations.

The end of boarding houses and related forms of socially supportive inexpensive good living is an unacknowledged cultural and economic disaster. The idea that every single human needs their own private toilet and bathing facilities, and must only eat communally under the sponsorship of a mommy and daddy or in a barracks like institution, is bizarre but what we did.

david fb

[steve203]

That said, 40% to 50% of marriages end in divorce, so there may be tremendous costs on the back end.

Ayup. A coworker of mine commented one day: he entirely paid for his house himself, then, after the divorce, he had to pay for half of the house again.

The first wife of a cousin of mine had ambitions of dumping John, but keeping the house, free and clear. Didn’t work out that way. My uncle had kept the house in his name, so it wasn’t part of the divorce settlement.

iirc, it was Za Za Gabor who said words to the effect “I’m an excellent housekeeper. Every time I get divorced, I keep the house”.

Of course, there is the flip side. One of my regular customers in my RS commented one day “I never had so much extra money when I was married”.

When my dad was dating his second wife, all he talked about what how her dad made a fortune in oil in Edmonton. After the marriage, all he talked about is how she spent all her own money, and spent his before he saw it.

I was talking with the CFO at work one day. He commented that they had to send runners out to the job sites delivering paychecks. Why didn’t the workers have direct deposit? If they had direct deposit, the wife would spend all the money on herself the moment it hit the bank account.

Remember the “free credit report dot com” TV adverts? I found this one to be particularly hilarious.

Free Credit Report - Dream Girl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK4wOCcnbTk

Steve…happy bachelor with paid for condo

[DrBob2]

At higher levels, couples postpone marriage and child-birth to invest in education and careers, but eventually marry at high rates and have relatively low risk for divorce.

Ah, yes – Fishtown and Belmont. Ten years ago Charles Murray wrote a book titled Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010.

www.city-journal.org/html/white-blight-9694.html
Murray creates a fictional town, Belmont, to illustrate the demographics and culture of the new upper class. Belmont looks nothing like the well-heeled but corrupt, godless enclave of the populist imagination. On the contrary: the top 20 percent of citizens in income and education exemplify the core founding virtues Murray defines as industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religious observance…

The American virtues are not doing so well in Fishtown, Murray’s fictional working-class counterpart to Belmont. In fact, Fishtown is home to a “new lower class” whose lifestyle resembles The Wire more than Roseanne. Murray uncovers a five-fold increase in the percentage of white male workers on disability insurance since 1960, a tripling of prime-age men out of the labor force—almost all with a high school degree or less—and a doubling in the percentage of Fishtown men working less than full-time. Time-use studies show that these men are not using their newly found leisure to fix the dishwasher or take care of the kids. Mostly, they’re watching more television, getting more sleep—and finding trouble…

Most disastrous for Fishtown residents has been the collapse of the family, which Murray believes is now “approaching a point of no return.” For a while after the 1960s, the working class hung on to its traditional ways. That changed dramatically by the 1990s. Today, under 50 percent of Fishtown 30- to 49-year-olds are married; in Belmont, the number is 84 percent. About a third of Fishtowners of that age are divorced, compared with 10 percent of Belmonters. Murray estimates that 45 percent of Fishtown babies are born to unmarried mothers, versus 6 to 8 percent of those in Belmont.

DB2

[DrBob2]

This reminds me of the increase of plutonic marriages…

People who marry for money or couples who live underground?

DB2