𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Successive Governments have failed to recognise the importance of marriage with catastrophic consequences, campaigners claim as they push for help to keep couples together. The Marriage Foundation says that “couples who marry before the conception of their first child are half as likely to split up as couples who do not wed”.

Research director Harry Benson said: “In short, being married substantially increases the chances that parents stay together, regardless of when marriage occurs and regardless of socio-economic background.”

The foundation states there has been a “systemic underestimation” of the importance of marriage in the UK and says its research shows married parents do not stay together longer only because they are “older, better educated, and better off”. Its study of 3,324 couples over 14 years identified a “marriage effect” which persisted, “regardless of socio-economic background, race, religion, education, region, and dozens of other controlling factors”.

The study found the risk of break-up is highest for cohabiting couples during the first three years of parenthood (4.1%), compared to 2.5% for married parents. By the time a child reaches 14, the “probability of separation is 45% for never-married couples, compared to just 26% for those married”.

Mr Benson said: “This groundbreaking study categorically demonstrates the benefits of marrying, and blows apart decades of Government policy that has consistently downgraded marriage to just another form of relationship like cohabitating.

“It also serves as a rebuke to those politicians who have sneered at the institution and have, through their actions, actively discouraged marriage among the poorest couples with punitive welfare policies and a lack of courage to promote marriage for fear of being seen as old-fashioned or judgmental.

“Indeed, as our previous research showed, married couples from the lowest socio-economic group have a lower break-up rate than the richest cohabitees, while divorce rates have fallen to levels not seen since the early 1970s.”

The foundation warns that if a Government treats marriage and cohabitation as “functionally equivalent” it “contributes to family breakdown”. Ministers are urged to “actively promote marriage” and ensure fiscal policy and benefits “favour married and civil-partnered couples over cohabitation”.

Mr Benson claimed the Government “spends as little as £1 helping families stay together for every £6,000 in dealing with the consequences of family breakdown”. He wants “targeted incentives for low and middle-income couples” to “encourage marriage at an early stage’.

And he called on ministers to ensure the benefits systems does not deter people from getting wed and called on them to stop “spouting the crazy and factually inaccurate mantra that all relationships are the same”, arguing that “marriage is the gold standard of relationship types”.

A spokesperson for the Institute for Fiscal Studies said: “Identifying whether – or the extent to which – married couples are more likely to stay together as a result of marriage is difficult because the people who choose to get married are different to those who do not. Accounting for these underlying differences is therefore crucial for estimating the impact of marriage itself.

“Researchers at the IFS worked on this in the early 2010s, and found at that time that differences in characteristics such as income and education between married and unmarried couples explained much of the gap in how likely couples were to stay together.”