“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:7-8
The social sciences show that marriage has many financial benefits for the entire family:
• Children in a married home are least likely to live in poverty or live on public assistance.
• Married families have the highest income and average net worth of all family structures, and married men increase their productivity and income, on average,by26percentafter they marry.
• Married adults are more likely than their cohabiting peers to give emotional or material support to their parents. They also are more likely to turn to them for help in an emergency.
Your marriage powerfully confers material benefits on your children and your community. Do you and your spouse thank each other frequently for these benefits? Do you teach your children to thank God for your marriage?
The accompanying chart shows that the vast majority of children who are in poverty are from never-married households, whereas the smallest percentage of children in poverty is those living with married parents. We can better understand the potential of marriage if we see it not as a private exclusive matter, but also as a social good that helps the next generation and all of society.
*It bears emphasizing that these patterns hold for the groups involved, not for all the individuals who make up each group. There is naturally a wide variation among individuals.
http://marri.us/wp-content/uploads/Family-Financial-Benefits-of-Marriage.pdf