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>>Read more about Marriage Statistics>>
Marriage Statistics
The marriage statistics clearly show the benefits married people experience: higher incomes, greater emotional support, and healthier, longer lives. Speaking about decades of marriage statistics, University of Chicago Professor, Linda Waite and researcher Maggie Gallagher, state in The Case for Marriage, “The evidence from four decades of research is surprisingly clear: a good marriage is both men’s and women’s best bet for living a long a healthy life.” Professor Waite finds that the “relationship between marriage and death rates has now reached the status of truism, having been observed across numerous societies and among various social and demographical groups.”
In fact Dr. Robert Coombs of UCLA has also carefully tracked marriage statistics showing marriage impacts well-being. “Virtually every study of mortality and marital status shows the unmarried of both sexes have higher death rates, whether by accident, disease, or self-inflicted wounds, and this is found in every country that maintains accurate health statistics,” explains Dr. Coombs.
There are nearly 5 million cohabitating couples in the United States today. However social science clearly shows us that a cohabitating partner cannot replicate the benefits of marriage. Cohabitation cannot achieve the same beneficial results as marriage because cohabitation lacks commitment and fidelity.
Researchers Michael Newcomb and P.M. Bentler find notably reduced relational quality and stability: “Cohabiters experienced significantly more difficulty in their marriages with adultery, alcohol, drugs, and independence than couples who had not cohabited. Apparently this makes marriage preceded by cohabitation more prone to problems often associated with other deviant lifestyles – for example, use of drugs and alcohol, more permissive sexual relationships, and an abhorrence of dependence – than marriages not preceded by cohabitation.”
But with commitment and fidelity, according to Glenn Stanton in Why Marriage Matters, marriage statistics prove that marriage:
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Provides the highest levels of sexual pleasure and fulfillment for men and women
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Protects against feelings of loneliness
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Protects women from domestic and general violence
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Enhances a parents ability to parent
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Helps create better, more reliable employees
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Increases individual earnings and savings
As the best bet for a long, healthy life, marriage is the exclusive, powerful, proven medium through which the world can revolutionize social ills and our window to the future.
Sources: Why Marriage Matters, Glenn T. Stanton, 1997.
The Case For Marriage, Linda Waite & Maggie Gallagher, 2000.
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