Marriage, Income, Cause, and Effect

I'd believe it - single men spend a lot of money on things that make them look attractive to the opposite sex. If you're married you no longer have to worry about this and suddenly that Honda Accord doesn't seem so lame after all.

Are newspaper reporters under no obligation to examine cause and effect?

Could an academic write a paper saying that marriage is the cause of affluence, and poverty is a function of bad behavior, nothing more?

I think that political correctness precludes it.

My experience was the opposite of the Fitzhenrys. For the whole of my two-year marriage our finances were a mess. When my salary went up, they actually got worse, because my wife spent more money, and we went into thousands of dollars of credit card debt. Then she left me, and I almost immediately paid off the credit card debt and started saving money.

I guess my experience is atypical but why?

Nathan: Your experience wasn't atypical. Indeed, I imagine it is quite typical among divorcees.

Here's the difference between you and your ex-wife and the Fitzhenrys: they work as a team toward common goals, whereas your wife had her own agenda, which entailed her spending your money unilaterally.

Your mistake was not asking the right questions prior to marriage that would have exposed this character flaw of hers.

I think the problem with this way of looking at things is the marriage is not a cause or effect of wealth, but rather a byproduct. The simple act of marriage will not automatically make a person wealthy, but two people working toward the same goal and reaching a consensus on that goal are more likely to reach it. In many cases, a good marriage will allow a couple to balance out the weaknesses of the other, but the reason this happens is that both have committed to the same goals. If a couple marries without mutual agreement on their goals, they will not be any richer than a single person. Similarly, I expect a couple that has agreed upon goals that is not married is just as likely to reach those goals as the similar married couple. The only reason marriage would change the way people manage their money as a couple is that the written commitment of the marriage psychologically makes them reevaluate their current situation.