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Notes -
Getting married makes both men and women richer, because it allows them to share costs by living together and provides financial support if one spouse is in education or having a baby. Men who get married end up earning more than their unmarried peers in a way that studies suggest is genuinely causal.
Now of course having children does reduce earnings for the mother temporarily, that's obvious. But it's not as if it is permanent. A woman who gets married at 22 and has, say, 3 children over her 20s is going to end up richer than the same woman marrying the same man at 32 and having 3 kids, because they have both spent their 20s in more expensive singledom.
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