How Cost Influences Marriage Decisions

Getting married is not an easy step in anyone's life, and there are those who do not wish to make this decision at all. But, for those who do, the rampant costs now associated with such a ceremony may or may not be a deterrent factor. Seeking to find out which one of the two is it, economists from the University of Notre Dame have decided to take to the field, and analyze marriage trends spanning well over two and a half decades.

In order to understand the marriage trend, the experts say, one has to know a bit about how getting married became possible in the United States before the 1980s. Most states required the groom and bride to produce screening results after they took a blood test, so as to attest they were not suffering from conditions such as rubella or syphilis. The laws were meant to stop the spread of the disease to future generations, and also to identify potential patients. After the 1980s, when vaccines became common and penicillin was invented, all states except for Mississippi and the District of Columbia dropped the test.

Therefore, the Notre Dame team, led by Kasey Buckles, and colleagues Melanie Guldi, from the Mount Holyoke College, and Joseph Price, from the Bringham Young University, decided to follow state marriage rate data recorded in these two places between 1980 and 2006. They discovered that, when the expensive blood test was required, 5.7 percent fewer marriage licenses were emitted by the state. Of those people, about a half drove outside the state to get married, while the other half decided to not get married at all due to the costs.

The investigation also hints at the fact that blood test taxes seem to take a higher toll on young African-American women, as well as on women without higher education. The economists also reveal that policies such as mandatory, premarital counseling, waiting periods and license fees also deter young people from saying their woes, as do tax and transfer programs. All these elements contribute to a higher overall marriage cost, even if, in themselves, they don't seem like much. The cumulative effect may simply be too large for some couples to get married, e! Science News informs.