What makes a happy marriage? Money helps, but it’s not quite as simple as that.

Theories on what makes a stable relationship vary. Some research suggests that couples are more likely to split up and less likely to marry when the male partner lacks full-time work or earns less than the female partner. Other experts say that economic dependence strengthens a couple’s obligation to each other; even if they stay together because they can’t afford to move out into separate places, they may be glad they stuck it out later. Complimentary work hours may also help couples juggle parental and other household responsibilities.

But a recent study in the journal Demography by Patrick Ishizuka, a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University’s Cornell Population Center, has a different theory. He says couples are more likely to set up a life together when they earn similar amounts of money. And when each partner in a cohabiting couple or marriage earn similar amounts of money, they’re actually less likely to get separated. “Once couples have reached a certain income and wealth threshold, they’re more likely to marry,” he said. “Economically disadvantaged couples are also more likely to separate.”

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‘Once couples have reached a certain income and wealth threshold, they’re more likely to marry. Economically disadvantaged couples are also more likely to separate.’ Patrick Ishizuka

He analyzed the Census Bureau’s “Survey of Income and Program Participation” from 1996 to 2013 to test alternative theories of how money and work affect whether cohabiting couples marry or separate. The economic foundations of a happy union do not just lie in a man’s ability to be a good provider, he found. “Increases in wealth and couples’ earnings relative to a standard associated with marriage strongly predict marriage.” What’s more, couples with “higher and more equal earnings” are significantly less likely to separate.

Ishizuka’s study supports “the marriage bar” theory, which contends that the closer a couple is to reaching the economic standards associated with marriage — like saving enough to buy a house and maintain a lifestyle to which they have become accustomed (or to which they would like to become accustomed) — the more likely they are to get married. “They want to have a house and a car and enough savings to have a big wedding; and they also want to have stable jobs and a steady income,” he said.

And yet social attitudes remain staunchly traditional when it comes to who puts the proverbial bread on the table. More young men than women have consistently held less egalitarian views on working mothers, according to a 2017 paper, “Trending Towards Traditionalism,” by sociologists Joanna Pepin and David Cotter. There’s also been a decline in the number of young men and women supporting working mothers over the last 20 years. The percentage of high-school seniors holding more traditional views on working mothers fell to 42% in 2014 from 58% in 1994.

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Other studies suggest an even higher number of Americans favor male breadwinners. More than 70% of Americans say it is very important for a man to be able to support a family financially and to be a good husband or partner, but less than one-third say the same for a woman, according to a recent survey of nearly 5,000 adults by the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. This comes as women in the U.S. have increased their labor force participation and earning power. In 1980, only 13% of married women earned more than or as much as their husbands versus 25% in 2000.

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Ishizuka’s research also supports the idea that the wealthier and more educated you are, the more likely you are to get married. In 2015, among adults ages 25 and older, 65% with a four-year college degree were married, compared with 55% of those with some college education and 50% among those with no education beyond high school, a separate analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by Pew concluded. Twenty-five years earlier, the marriage rate was above 60% for all these groups. Never-married adults who have not completed college are more likely than college graduates to say they don’t plan on marrying.

Writer Julia Baird has another theory: Men’s egos may not fare so well when if they don’t earn as much as their wives. “Oh, how fragile is the ego of a man. We must never let him feel like a bonsai in a grove of California redwoods — no, he must always see himself as a towering tree, magnificent in comparison with his female partner,” she wrote in Glamour Magazine. Indeed, the risk of divorce was 32% higher when a husband isn’t working full-time, according to a study of more than 6,300 couples by Alexandra Killewald, professor of sociology at Harvard University, published last year in the “American Sociological Review.”

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