Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

> The odds of a cohabiting couple with children breaking up was more than seven times as high as for a married couple who had not lived together before marriage, and more than four times as high as for those who had lived together but went on to marry.

I wonder how the researchers control for the effects of external factors, like the family's economic wellbeing?

After all, a family that is struggling financially might be less able to afford a wedding; might have more to get into arguments about; and might have less money to spend on their children. But I'm not sure how easy it would be to control for that.

View on HN

If you do not insist on a lavish party, a wedding can be remarkably cheap.

We paid something like 150 USD in fees and all the celebratory meals around that cost less than 400 USD total.

Sure, it's possible. But in a lot of places marriages are very expensive affaire. Social pressure cannot be ignored.

True, but those tend to be the very same cultures that have high rates of marriage and low rates of out-of-wedlock births (e.g. Indians, Arabs, Turks)

The article gives an example of an extremely expensive wedding in the US.

I was married in America in a mainstream church. There’s a lot of pressure to spend.

It’s largely a result of commercialization. Lots of wedding related businesses creating fake traditions.

“An engagement ring should cost a months salary,” etc.

Just note that marriage != wedding.

A couple can get married without a wedding. On the same amount of money they would need to move in together and split the bills.

I mean marriage is free on tuesdays around here, you just go to the county and sign some paperwork. Marriage is a legal process, any embellishment or celebration is by choice.

Out of interest, where is here?

Locally in Oxford, UK, you can get married on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning for £57 (under $100) at the registry office.

what you say is true, but I reckon the more expensive the wedding, the more enduring it probably is.

Weddings are a signal. The louder the signal, then the bigger the bet, and thus, the more you have riding on that bet. Weddings are a choice, but they are a choice of sending a strong signal to others. You should not discount the powerful effect it may have over the marriage itself.

And then there's couples getting weddings, without getting married. I.e. all the ceremony and partying to celebrate their love and commitment, without entering into the legal structure that is marriage.

That is going to run afoul of some common law marriage laws...

In that circumstance they'd be married under common law in very few, mostly low population US states (not sure about the rest of the world).

My fiancée and I have been living together since 2003, and every once in a while someone will say we'd be married under common law. But it does require a little more than mere cohabitation, and -- more importantly -- Ohio doesn't have common law marriage ... not anymore, at least.

why ? Very few states recognize common law marriage. Do you know know otherwise ?

Is this true (in any jurisdiction)? AFAIK, a marriage is invalid without a (witnessed) wedding ceremony.

I suspect they meant wedding reception, the party after the formal wedding. That part eats most of expenses. The formal ceremony at Standesamt costs 42USD where I live.

Yeah but that ceremony can be performed on the spot by the clerk or judge using the license.

In my country for example (Romania) a legal marriage requires a man and a woman (unfortunately gay marriage is not allowed) registering at the local "Civil state office", and agreeing to marry before the "Civil state officer", with at least two witnesses present. Once you do this, you are legally married. There are some further formalities to perform afterwards (e.g. your identity card must be changed to show your legal status as married, and I believe you must notify your employer of your change in legal status).

I don't know about the broader world, but in the US there are a few states that allow common law marriage such that the only requirement is a public declaration that you're married.

Another external factor is culture: in a country were marriage is more or less forced, it might also be very difficult to divorce.

Does this take into account different laws around divorce in different countries?

(And also - having seen children whose parents refuse to divorce when they clearly don't like each other, please please please get divorced, for the sake of the children!)

> Does this take into account different laws around divorce in different countries?

Don't forget welfare and child support rules/laws which can penalize marriage and reward separation/divorce.

I've noticed the opposite - not getting married with kids was more of a hipster choice among my friends with money, but that's just anecdotal.

In Europe, it seems often financially motivated. At least, that’s a common refrain that I’ve heard.

Marriage seems surprisingly unpopular among women, despite the fact that they seem to disproportionately benefit from the arrangement.

Hmm, living in the Netherlands, in Europe, it seems the reverse in my social circle. People mostly see it as a personal choice they make because they don't see the point, with other legal possibilities also being available. Looking around my circle it seems marriage (or registered partnership) is more popular under the lower income couples.

So not saying you are wrong, just saying it really depends on your social circle and broader culture or country, as there will likely be big differences between secular countries vs religious countries.

People with money are interesting, but they usually don't affect population level behavioral statistics because there are too few of them.

If you're struggling financially, wouldn't that be a reason to stay together, rather than break up/divorce? If you break up/divorce you have to pay for 2 apartments rather than 1.

So a cohabiting couple too poor to afford a wedding might also be too poor to break up. So the bias might be in the opposite direction than you think.

Financial insecurity is huge stress factor, and constant stress and uncertainty are a huge strain on every relationship.

Yes, but if you’re poor enough, the state chips in.

In general, it’s a wash.

I suspect this doesn’t hold. An unhealthy relationship with financial stress isn’t likely to foster cooperative behavior. The friends I’ve had in bad relationships almost always saw one or both of them hiding money and/or “stealing” from the communal account.

There is a lot of shame in not being able to take care of yourself even if no one blames you. So you cant buy flowers - ever, cant take her out - ever, cant take her on vacation - ever, cant buy a gift, not even on her birthday - ever. Sometimes there is food! That is suppose to be it? Not everyone is stupid enough to go ahead and have kids at that point. Renting your own room is required to be an angry asshole who failed at life on your own for a while - or indefinitely.

It can be both. I’ve known people who were driven to divorce by poverty related issues (“my husband is terrible with money and works at McDonalds”), but couldn’t divorce right away because they couldn’t afford it.

Those in extreme poverty have to save up.

> cohabitation is less stable than marriage regardless of the mother’s educational background. In the overwhelming majority of countries, the most educated cohabiting parents still have a far higher rate of break-up than the lowest educated married couples.

The commitment effects of marriage are a lot stronger than socioeconomic effects. Cohabiting professional managerial class couples break up more than married working class couples.

I'd be curious if that remains the case when conditioning on cohabitation length. Perhaps newly entered cohabitation is more likely to result in a breakup than a newly entered marriage, but is a ten-year cohabitation much more likely than a ten-year marriage to eventually break up? If not, the statistic that cohabitation results in breakup more often could simply be a byproduct of how much easier it is to enter cohabitation than marriage, so it's done more frequently with less consideration.

“ If not, the statistic that cohabitation results in breakup more often could simply be a byproduct of how much easier it is to enter cohabitation than marriage”

What’s funny about what you said, is that it is exactly the professed reason for getting married.

I.e. marriage is harder to do, you have to get in front of the entire community and sign a consent contract. Etc. Doing hard things raises the bar for a relationship, and, controlling for everything possible, has far better outcomes for children.

> I wonder how the researchers control for the effects of external factors

Since no one else mentioned it: Religiosity is my guess for the key factor. In particular "married couple who had not lived together before marriage" would be strongly correlated with faith.

Religiosity -> Marriage and Religiosity -> Stability.

A lot of this work doesn't distinguish between styles of cohabitation. There has been other work done that shows a link between financial stability and length of relationship. Well off people in countries that have less strong marriage culture often form lengthy monogamous relationships characterised by substantial resource sharing and durable commitment. I.e. they engage in "marriage-like" behaviour and have similar outcomes.

> they engage in "marriage-like" behaviour and have similar outcomes.

Not the case in Sweden, one of the countries where marriage is odd and cohabitation is normal and marriage deviant. I’m not aware of any country where marriage and cohabitation have similar outcomes. Can you share your source?

What are you talking about? Marriage is by far the dominant form of cohabitation in Sweden. https://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/sq/124634

What is true is that the average age at first marriage is high in Sweden at around 34 years, which means if you only look at what twenty-somethings are doing you will get very confused about how people are living together, but in fact a lot of couples are older than 30.

Marriage is a style of cohabitation, once people adopt another name for other styles to study, what you propose might be possible.

Otherwise it is just reading the arrangements of chicken bones.

It's way more expensive to get divorced than to get married. Even if you have a "normal" wedding venue and reception. It's not uncommon for a divorce attorney to charge tens of thousands, and of course the spouse has one charging that too.

What's the relevance of being able to afford a wedding?

Correlation with not being able to afford much at all. Edit: and of course, in this case, marriage is relevant because it's the classification chosen by the authors

If you can't afford a wedding ceremony, you move in together sooner (hard to tell a young adult person for five or ten years to keep their hormones in control) and may have children later (the out-of-wedlock thing is still a meme), drawing out the coinhabiting phase.

At that point it might be worth ignoring the wedding industry's constant marketing of expensive weddings as being a prerequisite to a marriage.

Many people take on debt to finance a wedding. I personally have known people who were under a lot of financial stress for the first several years of their marriage as a result, and the run-up is often a stressful time.

That's actually the opposite from what michaelt said.

michaelt said people who are unmarried might be poorer. This correlation might arise due to people being too poor to get married.

You're saying people who are married might be poorer due to spending all their money (or borrowing money) on the wedding.

Understood that, but I think there's a distinction between being able to afford to get married, and being able to afford an extravagant wedding. This is a choice thing, not an affordability thing.

Many people (wrongly) believe that a wedding venue rental and lavish reception is required to become married.

Anyone who can't afford a big wedding already knows you don't need a big wedding.

I wish what you say were perfectly true.

https://lendedu.com/blog/cost-of-wedding/ (Headline: One-Third of Americans Go Into Unnecessary Debt to Pay For Extravagant Weddings—And Quite a Few End Up Regretting It)

This is more true with college though.

Headline: ‘humans are bad with money’

What if economic well-being was an effect of (or perhaps a confounding factor of) rather than an input factor of marriage stability?

There’s a fairly large body of work that suggests that families and men in particular will significantly increase their income after getting and staying married. Ex. [1] The conservatives have been saying this for years. [2]

https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/marriage-solution-income-in...

https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/marri...

Did they control for country?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com