Interpreting The Data
The marriage gap is susceptible to multiple interpretations because it is not clear to what extent it is attributable to causation and what to correlation. It may be that people who already have a number of positive indicators of future wellbeing in terms of wealth and education are more likely to get married.
The distinction between correlation and causation cuts to the heart of the debate about marriage. The evidence is unequivocal; children raised by married couples are healthier, do better at school, commit fewer crimes, go further in education, report higher levels of wellbeing. It is easy for politicians to deduce - and assert - that married couples therefore produce superior children. But the children do not necessarily do better because their parents are married and there is actually very little evidence that marriage alone, in the absence of anything else, benefits children.
Read more about this topic: Marriage Gap
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