What Do “I Do”s Do? Potential Benefits of Marriage for Cohabiting Couples with Children

reform bill, which included promoting marriage as a goal, and continuing with President G.W. Bush’s declaration that, “my administration will give unprecedented support to strengthening marriages,” using government policies to actively promote marriage as a way to reduce poverty and improve the wellbeing of children and families has gained currency (Ooms 2002). Among the most logical targets for marriage promotion activities are cohabiting couples, especially those with children. Unlike unattached single parents, cohabitors already demonstrate a certain level of commitment to one another, and they and their children may benefit from the material and psychosocial advantages that married couple families accrue. Previous research demonstrates that children living with cohabitors fare worse than children living with married parents, and in some cases no better than children living with single parents, on a host of outcome measures (Acs and Nelson 2002, 2003; Nelson, Clark, and Acs 2001; Manning and Brown 2003; Manning and Lichter 1996). Specifically, compared with children living with their married biological or adoptive parents, children living with cohabitors are more likely to experience material hardships such as poverty, food insecurity, and housing insecurity; more likely to exhibit behavioral problems or problems in school; and less likely to have positive interactions with their parents (such as being read to frequently). No one would suggest that the differences in well-being between married and cohabiting families will simply vanish if cohabiting couples were to marry. Clearly some differences in well-being reflect differences in the characteristics (such as age or education) of those who choose to cohabit rather than marry. But advocates of marriage promotion argue that marriage has intrinsic benefits that would accrue to couples that marry. This brief assesses the potential size of these intrinsic benefits. To do this, we examine how much of the difference in well-being between children in cohabiting and married couple families can be explained by differences in the characteristics of these families. Any remaining differences may be the result of the intrinsic benefits of marriage. As such, we establish an upper bound of sorts for the potential benefits of promoting marriage among cohabiting families. We find that differences in characteristics explain 50 to 80 percent of the differences in child well-being between cohabiting and married families. Thus, if programs could successfully promote marriage among cohabiting couples with children, we would expect modest but non-negligible improvements in child well-being.