Citations
Sources
Statistics on the Focus on Relationships page come from longitudinal and nationally representative datasets. Each entry includes the underlying study, the year of data, and a direct link to the source.
A note on interpretation. The poverty figure in source 01 is a direct measurement from the Census and is reported without statistical controls. The other three figures describe associations rather than pure causal effects. Even the strongest studies cited below show family-structure gaps that shrink but persist after controlling for income, race, parental education, and cognitive aptitude. Read these as indicators that children in stable two-parent families are more likely to thrive, not as proof that single parenthood directly causes any one outcome.
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Stat 01 Poverty
5×
Children in single-parent households versus married-couple families. 21.8 percent compared with 4.3 percent.
Poverty rate by family structure
In 2024, 21.8 percent of female-householder families with no spouse present lived below the poverty level. The rate for married-couple families was 4.3 percent. The gap is roughly five to one.
Source. U.S. Census Bureau, Poverty in the United States: 2024 (Report P60-287). Published September 2025.
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-287.html
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Stat 02 A degree, or not
2.5×
Young men raised without their biological father are about 2.5 times less likely to graduate college. 14 percent compared with 35 percent.
College graduation by paternal presence
Young men born between 1980 and 1984 who were raised with their biological father had a 35% college graduation rate by ages 28 to 34. Young men raised without their biological father had a 14% rate.
Source. Wendy Wang, Life Without Father: Less College, Less Work, and More Prison for Young Men Growing Up Without Their Biological Father. Institute for Family Studies, analyzing the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97).
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Stat 03 Jail time
2×
Young men raised without their biological father are roughly twice as likely to have served jail time by age 30.
Incarceration by paternal presence
Young men in the same NLSY97 cohort who were raised without their biological father were approximately twice as likely to have served jail time by age 30. The gap holds after controlling for family income, race, maternal education, and AFQT (cognitive aptitude) score.
Source. Same as 02. Wang, IFS, NLSY97 analysis.
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Stat 04 The pattern repeats
2×
Children whose parents divorce are roughly twice as likely to divorce in their own marriage. The pattern travels.
Intergenerational divorce transmission
Adult children whose parents divorced are roughly twice as likely to see their own marriage end in divorce, compared with peers from continuously married families. The estimate sits in the range of 1.5 to 2 times higher odds once controls are added. When both spouses come from divorced families, the multiplier rises further. Children of divorce are not destined to divorce, and many go on to build lasting marriages.
Source. Paul R. Amato and Danelle D. DeBoer, “The Transmission of Marital Instability Across Generations: Relationship Skills or Commitment to Marriage?” Journal of Marriage and Family, volume 63, issue 4, pages 1038 through 1051. 2001. Dataset is the Marital Instability Over the Life Course study, a national panel of 2,033 married US adults first surveyed in 1980 and followed across six waves through 2000.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.01038.x
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Stat 05 Abuse
10×
Children in single-parent and cohabiting-partner households are roughly ten times more likely to be abused than children with married biological parents.
Family structure and child maltreatment
Children living with a single parent who had a cohabiting partner had more than ten times the rate of abuse and nearly eight times the rate of neglect compared with children living with both married biological parents. The Fourth National Incidence Study (NIS-4) is a congressionally mandated study with a nationally representative sample of more than 10,700 children drawn from 122 counties, with data collected in 2005 and 2006.
Source. Sedlak, A.J., Mettenburg, J., Basena, M., Petta, I., McPherson, K., Greene, A., and Li, S. Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4): Report to Congress. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, 2010.
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Marriage Benefit 01 Live Longer
35%
Single individuals showed a 55% higher risk of all-cause death (hazard ratio 1.55), which corresponds to roughly one-third (about 35%) lower risk for married individuals. The association was stronger for men (cardiovascular HR 1.79) than women (1.34).
Source. “The Association Between Marital Status and the Risk of Cardiovascular, Cancer, and All-Cause Mortality: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” 2024. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12612516/
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Marriage Benefit 02 Financial
9×
Among householders under 35, median net worth was $86,430 for married couples, versus $9,390 for unmarried women (9.2×) and $27,620 for unmarried men (3.1×).
Source. U.S. Census Bureau, The Wealth of Households: 2021 (Report P70BR-183), June 2023. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p70br-183.html
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Marriage Benefit 03 Mental Health
58%
Divorced or separated individuals have about 2.4 times the suicide rate of married people — so married people have roughly 58% lower risk.
Source. Augustine J. Kposowa, “Marital Status and Suicide in the National Longitudinal Mortality Study,” Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, vol. 54, 2000. https://jech.bmj.com/content/54/4/254
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Marriage Benefit 04 Health
~2x
Unmarried adults are almost twice as likely to become physically frail as married adults.
Source. “Marital Status and Risk of Physical Frailty: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” Journal of the American Medical Directors Association (JAMDA), 2019. View source →
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Marriage Benefit 05 Longevity
Nearly 2x
Married adults have a substantially lower death rate than adults who have never married.
Source. CDC/NCHS, “Mortality Among Adults Aged 25 and Over by Marital Status: United States, 2010–2017,” Health E-Stat, April 2020. View source →
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Marriage Benefit 06 Financial
3x+
Young married couples build several times more wealth than their unmarried peers.
Source. U.S. Census Bureau, “The Wealth of Households: 2021,” Report P70BR-183, June 2023. View source →
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Marriage Benefit 07 Mental & Emotional Wellbeing
Up to ~2x
Married adults are significantly less likely to experience symptoms of depression.
Source. Zhai et al., “Association and causal mediation between marital status and depression in seven countries,” Nature Human Behaviour, 2024. View source →
Additional supporting research
- Brad Wilcox and Wendy Wang, The Millennial Success Sequence, AEI/IFS. Educational and economic mobility differences for millennials raised in intact families.
- Nicholas Zill and W. Bradford Wilcox, “Family Still Matters for Key Indicators of Student Performance,” IFS. 2016 National Household Education Survey, n=13,523.
- Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez, “Where Is the Land of Opportunity?” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2014. NBER Working Paper 19843.
- Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent. Harvard University Press, 1994. Foundational reference.
- Melissa S. Kearney, The Two-Parent Privilege. University of Chicago Press, 2023. Narrative synthesis of the literature.
- Nicholas H. Wolfinger, Understanding the Divorce Cycle: The Children of Divorce in Their Own Marriages. Cambridge University Press, 2005. Reports the doubling effect on adult children of divorce and shows the multiplier rising further when both spouses come from divorced families.
- Paul R. Amato and Sarah E. Patterson, “The Intergenerational Transmission of Union Instability in Early Adulthood.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 2017. Reframes the effect in per-event terms, with each parental breakup raising the odds of one’s own union dissolving by roughly 16 percent. Add Health dataset, n equals 6,784.