Married men earn more, live longer, and report better health. Married women see smaller or negative returns on all three
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In the U.S., married men sit atop the wage ladder, earning a significant premium over their unmarried counterparts at every age. A meta-analysis of dozens of economic studies found that married men earn, on average, 15.5% more than single men. But here is the less-discussed half of that finding: Single men, single women, and married women all earn about the same over their careers. The wage boost flows only in one direction: toward married men.
This is the so-called marriage premium, one of the most replicated findings in labor economics. It extends beyond wages into health, longevity, and emotional well-being. And across all three domains, the same asymmetry holds: marriage returns are larger for men, smaller for women, and in some cases negative for women. "All these benefits to men have a cost to women," Cindy DiTiberio told Quartz in a recent interview about why women are leaving marriages in such disproportionate numbers.
Here is what the data behind that looks like.
Across studies, marriage entry has been associated with wages 5% to 20% higher for men. On average, research papers find that wages are about 10% higher for married men after controlling for observables, according to a 2023 Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond working paper. The debate among economists is not whether the premium exists but what explains it: selection (high-earning men are more likely to marry), specialization (wives handle domestic work, freeing husbands to work more), or household search effects (married couples can hold out for better job offers).
A paper in the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics by Laura Pilossoph and Shu Lin Wee showed that the marital wage premium is partly driven by the benefits of having a partner when looking for work, according to a summary published by the American Economic Association. Using data from the Current Population Survey, the model revealed that household search effects explained 10% to 33% of the premium for males, and 20% to 58% of the much smaller premium for females.
Meanwhile, women face the opposite dynamic when they become mothers. Research shows that the hourly wages of mothers are about 5% lower per child than the wages of non-mothers, according to findings cataloged in the motherhood penalty literature. Men, by contrast, do not suffer a penalty when they become fathers. In fact, there is evidence of a "fatherhood bonus," in which their earnings increase, according to the American Association of University Women. Research from Third Way, using NLSY79 data, found that fatherhood increases men's earnings by over 6%, all other things being equal. A Bankrate analysis of Census Bureau data found that full-time working mothers earned 35% less in wages than fathers working full-time in 2024.
Data from the U.S. Medicare Health Outcomes Survey show that, between ages 65 and 85, married men and women had longer total life expectancy than unmarried men and women. At 65, married men lived 18.6 years on average, 2.2 years longer than unmarried men. For married women, the gap was smaller: 21.1 years of total life expectancy, 1.5 years longer than for unmarried women, according to the study published in PMC.
The longevity gap favoring married men over unmarried men, in other words, was about 47% larger than the equivalent gap for women. A meta-analysis of 21 studies covering almost 7.9 million individuals found that being unmarried is "particularly more dangerous for men than for women with respect to CVD and all-cause mortality."
The Terman Life-Cycle Study, one of the longest-running longevity studies, sharpened this point. The study, which began following more than 1,500 people in 1921, found that whereas steadily married men were likely to live substantially longer than divorced or remarried men, divorced women lived almost as long as their married peers. Howard S. Friedman, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, and author of The Longevity Project, summarized the finding: "Women who stayed single, got and stayed divorced or were widowed often lived quite long without the burdens of husband trouble."
Married men are healthier than unmarried or divorced men and are also more likely to live longer, according to Harvard Health Publishing. Unmarried, divorced, and widowed men don't eat as well as married men, are less likely to exercise, and are more likely to smoke, drink excessively, and engage in other risky behaviors. Married men, in contrast, are more likely to get regular medical care.
For women, the picture is more conditional. Women's health is "more strongly impacted than men's by marital conflict or satisfaction," such that unhappily married women do not enjoy better health relative to their single counterparts. A study published in Social Science Quarterly by Ohio State University sociologist Dmitry Tumin compared birth cohorts and found that married people only exhibited health benefits if their union lasted 10 years or more, and the effect was "completely attenuated among women in the youngest birth cohort." Tumin concluded that the "protective effects of marriage had eroded over time."
Low-quality marriages have worse effects on women's health, and women who remarry obtain fewer health benefits than men, according to research published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
If the wage, health, and longevity returns of marriage accrue disproportionately to men, the unpaid labor that sustains them falls disproportionately on women. According to a Pew Research Center analysis of American Time Use Survey data, men spend an average of one hour and 34 minutes on housework each day, while women spend two hours and 19 minutes. Men also spent more time in leisure and sports activities than women: 5.5 hours, compared with 4.7 hours, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Getting married appears to exacerbate the burden of household work on women, according to a report from the Gender Equity Policy Institute, which analyzed 2022 American Time Use Survey data. Married women do substantially more household work than their single women peers, while married men spend just a few minutes a day more than their single peers. Married women without children do 2.3 times as much household work as their male counterparts.
A 2019 Pew Research Center survey found that married men (51%) are more likely than married women (40%) to say they are very satisfied with the way household chores are divided. For the most part, there are no gender differences among cohabiting couples in how they rate aspects of their relationship.
In 1972, sociologist Jessie Bernard argued in her book The Future of Marriage that in every marriage there are two marriages, "his and hers," and that sociological data reveal marriage is more beneficial for men than for women. More than five decades later, the data have grown more granular. The conclusion has not changed.
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