Unmarried Equality members have probably noticed lots of ways in which single people are not treated fairly by businesses and other groups and organizations. Let’s do more than just rolling our eyes or venting among ourselves. Let’s call them out.
The number of single people has been growing for more than a half-century. Of all Americans who are unmarried, the biggest proportion of them, by far, are people who have never been married. Yet not much research has focused specifically on this group. Maybe that’s in part because the percentage of people who stayed single all their life has, in the past, been fairly small. But that may be changing.
I have spent a lot of time and effort debunking myths about marriage – for example, if you get married, you will be lastingly happier and healthier, live longer, have more and better sex, more interpersonal connections, and raise more successful children. (You can find links to all of the debunking here.) But there is one claim about marriage that I do not contest – if you get married, you probably will end up better off financially.
[Bella’s intro: Rajiv told me this story by email and I asked him if I could share it here. Thanks, Rajiv, for agreeing. ]
“All Things Single” readers, I’m blogging to you first. My new book, Singlism: What It Is, Why It Matterse, and How to Stop It – written together with 28 other contributors – is now available. You can get it here at Amazon, though as I write this, Amazon has not yet added the description of the book. (They build book pages one or two sections at a time.) You can also get the paperback here, at the book’s own page, where the description does show up.
Recently, my friend and colleague Wendy Morris sent me the picture of this billboard. (In case the words are hard to see, it says, “Married people earn more money.”) Wendy is a terrific singles scholar and she is providing guidance to the next generation of researchers. One of her students, Kate Maloney, first noticed the billboard. (Thanks, Kate and Wendy!) Kate was offended by the crass message that people should marry for money. Wendy objected to the discrimination that factors into married people’s greater haul.
