[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by rubecube

That's speculation at best.

Sorry, it's well documented.

Don’t be a bachelor: Why married men work harder, smarter and make more money (the Washington Post)

...Men who get married work harder and more strategically, and earn more money than their single peers from similar backgrounds. Marriage also transforms men’s social worlds; they spend less time with friends and more time with family; they also go to bars less and to church more. In the provocative words of Nobel Laureate George Akerlof, men “settle down when they get married; if they fail to get married they fail to settle down.”

Research findings on heterosexual marriage are surprisingly consistent with Akerlof’s insight, especially when it comes to engaging the world of work.

Our research, featured in a recent report, “For Richer, For Poorer: How Family Structures Economic Success in America,” indicates that men who are married work about 400 hours more per year than their single peers with equivalent backgrounds. They also work more strategically: one Harvard study found that married men were much less likely than their single peers to quit their current job unless they had lined up another job.

This translates into a substantial marriage premium for men. On average, young married men, aged 28-30, make $15,900 more than their single peers, and married men aged 44-46 make $18,800 more than their single peers.

That’s even after controlling for differences in education, race, ethnicity, regional unemployment, and scores on a test of general knowledge. What’s more: the marriage premium operates for black, Hispanic, and less-educated men in much the same way as it does for men in general.

For instance, men with a high-school degree or less make at least $17,000 more than their single peers.

Why is there such a substantial marriage premium? Could it simply be that the kind of men who get and stay married have certain characteristics? Perhaps the marrying kind is more charming, hard-working, or ambitious.

And yet the research suggests at least part of the marriage premium is causal: one study showed gains at work when men are married compared to when the same men were not married and another study of twins found that married twins earned 26 percent more than their identical twins who were not married...

The article has links to the studies, and a lot of other data about societal effects of marriage on men. It's worth a read.