From: "Russell Coker" <russell@coker.com.au>
http://www.alternet.org/marriage-dying
Interesting article about the support for marriage being a way of attacking poor people, interracial couples, and other couples who aren't liked by the people in power.
http://www.acoss.org.au/uploads/ACOSS%20Poverty%20Report%202012_Final.pdf Table 4: Risk of poverty - proportion of people from different groups living below poverty lines in 2009-10 (%) 50% of median - At risk group 60% of median Single, no children: 25.3 41.5 Lone parent: 25.0 36.4 Couple, no children: 8.4 18.5 Couple, children: 9.0 14.0 Obviously living as a couple decreases your risk of being poor. It starts with basic income safety: With two people at work you do not loose all earned income if one is out of work. Of course, couple does not equal marriage. AFAIK (and from experience) Australia treats married couple and de facto relationships equally in most aspects (e.g. taxation). In Germany it is different. There are quite high incentives to marry for financial reasons. Whether it covers a $27k wedding and a potential divorce is debatable;-) Regards Peter