Published: Jan. 23, 2026 at 1:23 p.m. ET
From an economist’s perspective, one advantage of marriage is the financial benefits.
Marriage allows risk-sharing between partners (i.e., one partner can work more if the other loses their job) and allows couples to take advantage of returns to scale (i.e., it’s cheaper to maintain one household than two separate ones). These benefits are why I find the roughly 30% drop in marriage rates over the last 40 years troubling.