I am a very casual browser of TRP. I got the impression here that marriage is for losers, chumps. At least, personally I held the belief that: those who know best do not get chained down.

Now, some quick simple (logit) regressions in a German SOEP gives me the following results, on age, education and income by gender:

A. Married vs Co-Habitation (with life partner)

  • Men: age and income makes you more likely to be married than co-habitated. Additional years of education makes you less likely to marry.
  • Women: age makes you more likely to be married, income more likely to be co-habitated. Education has no effect.

B. Married vs. Unmarried (i.e. Co-Habitation, Single, Divorced, etc)

  • Men: age and income make marriage more likely, education has no effect.
  • Women: age and education make marriage more likely, income has no effect.

C. Partner (i.e. Co-Habitation, Marriage) vs. Single

  • Men: age and income make having a partner more likely. Education has no effect.
  • Women: age and education make having a partner more likely. Income has no effect.

Summary

  • Men: A high income makes men more likely to be married. In other regressions, I found it was neither likely that only the real rich (millionaires) are more likely to enjoy the bachelor lifestyle. Education actually decreases probability of being married. In short, financially successful men are married, if we generalise.
  • Women: Income has no effect, and actually those high in income are more likely to just be co-habiting. Education increases the probability of being married.

Now to my surprise, those successful financially marry. There is slight evidence that more educated men opt against marriage and for co-habitation. However, this effect is weaker than, for instance, age. Testing with some interaction terms - especially for those financially successful at a young age, e.g. earning €40k a year at age 23 - increases the predicted probability of you being married from around 15% to around 45%.

Obviously there is more in life than money - testable suggestions are welcome - but playing a bit with the data, it seems to me rich men opt for a wife, or possibly those who opt for a wife are rich.

Edit: minor grammar. Also, would like to make use of this opportunity to ask TRP if you have any questions to check with data? Or possibly presumptions to verify/refute? Like mine: 'surely, very wealthy men nowadays opt to be single.'