There Is No Way a Booty Can Call You - The Long Lost Art of Marriage

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13. It is the best way to keep children and women out of poverty

there is a direct correlation between income levels and marriage. The more income a man or women has, the more likely it is that they are married. Conversely, single parents and poverty go hand in hand.

For men ages 30-50 in the top 10 percent of annual earnings—a group that saw real earnings increases over time—83 percent are married today, down modestly from about 95 percent in 1970. For the median male worker (who experienced a decline in earnings of roughly 28 percent), only 64 percent are married today, down from 91 percent 40 years ago. And at the bottom 25th percentile of earnings, where earnings have fallen by 60 percent, half of men are married, compared with 86 percent in 1970. While the share of men who have been divorced has increased across the earnings distribution, an increase in the share of men who have never been married is the largest contributor to lower marriage rates.

The growing economic opportunities for women have been accompanied by changes in marriage rates. Figure 2 underscores that, just as with men, the decline in marriage rates is not spread evenly across income levels. Marriage rates either held constant or increased for the top 10 percent of female earners over the last four decades. In contrast, the bottom 70 percent of female earners saw their marriage rates decline by more than 15 percentage points.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/jobs/posts/2012/02/03-jobs-greenstone-looney

A family with two incomes offers more opportunities, more stability, more resources.