- Sometimes it feels like all women are pushing to get married – even the US government.
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- While more and more millennials are delaying or avoiding marriage, the economy hasn’t caught up.
- Single people pay more for housing, social life and taxes – and get less.
Kate Mannelly, a 29-year-old teacher from Boston, wants to move into a one-bedroom apartment. But the prices are almost the same as the rent she now shares with her sister in a two-bedroom apartment.
“I feel like the rental industry is really geared towards couples and those who share a room and can split the rent,” she told Insider. “What does this mean for the rest of us who aren’t in a relationship or don’t share a bedroom with a partner?”
Mannelly witnesses an effect of the flat tax that disadvantages singles in an economy shaped by post-WWII marriage and family values. Times have changed since then. Millennials are putting off buying a house, getting married and having children until later – or never. An Institute for Family Studies analysis of US Census data found that a record-breaking 35% of adult Americans ages 25 to 50 in 2018 had never been married. In 1970 this proportion was 9%.
It’s both a sign of hardship and progress: as millennials created a new version of the American Dream, being single has become more socially acceptable — and for many, preferable. But while the stigmas have shifted, the economic system that encourages marriage has not changed. The costs of being single are reflected in everything from social life and the tax code to housing and health insurance.
While singles’ costs are higher, they also earn less than their partners on average. Also, women, who already earn less than men on average, lag even further behind if they are Black or Hispanic. This discrepancy becomes even more problematic when millennials endure another economic problem: 40 years of high inflation.
Claudia Goldin, a professor of economics at Harvard University, said the research highlights marriage as a clear cause of higher earnings for men, she said.
But for women, she said, “there is little about a positive causal effect of marriage or partnership.”
One is the most expensive number
The US government defines “single” as people who are not married, meaning you can be legally single and still have a partner. It most commonly refers to those who are not married, living with a partner, or in a committed relationship. This is how singles are defined by the Pew Research Center, which describes 31% of Americans in its 2020 report on America’s singletons.
Many singles are looking to live alone. But as Mannelly’s case shows, that’s difficult in many US cities, where the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment is almost as expensive as a two-bedroom apartment. Falling affordability due to today’s housing crisis could also wipe out women’s progress towards home ownership.
“This may sound so depressing, but I really can’t see when I’ll ever be able to buy a house,” Mannelly said of life in Boston. “It just feels so unattainable right now. In a way, I’ve come to terms with the possibility that if I choose to live here, I may have to rent forever.”
Megan Rowsey and her 7 year old daughter.
Megan Rowsey
About 65% of single women said they would rather not wait until they are married to buy homes, according to Bank of America data released last month. To date, one in three women has bought a home, but Kathy Cummings, senior vice president of homeownership solutions at Bank of America, told Insider that many single women don’t feel financially ready to buy a home themselves, even if they’re emotional about it to be ready.
Megan Rowsey, a 27-year-old single mom, took the plunge in 2019 but told Insider she didn’t think she would make it in today’s economy.
“I don’t think I could buy a home in today’s market as I could only afford a fixer-upper,” she said, adding that the renovations she undertook were neither cheap nor easy. “The prices of houses and materials have gone up like crazy and I couldn’t have made it livable even if I got the house.”
No one to split the bill with
In her book, Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own, author and journalist Kate Bolick explores the appeal of choosing to be single for millions of American women. “Studies show that a woman living alone is more likely to have an active social life and maintain family ties,” she wrote, “not because she has extra free time, but because those are the ties that sustain her.”
But maintaining this larger social network can get expensive if you do it yourself. It means fewer dinners at home alone and more drinks with co-workers or dinners with friends. There are Uber rides home and hinge dates—all of which can drain the bank account.
So you can also give gifts and travel to visit all those loved ones. Some travel companies, such as hotels and cruise lines, charge solo travelers a “single surcharge” when only one person is using the Services. It doesn’t help that these activities are all more expensive now, thanks to inflation.
Solo travel can be quite expensive.
Jonathan Perugia/Getty Images
That’s not to say that married couples don’t have their own social life to support, but couples can share the cost. Additionally, many gym memberships, cell phone plans, and meal delivery services offer family plan deals.
Uncle Sam wants you to get married
Deals for couples and families are a ripple effect of a single tax approved by a government that favors married couples.
The tax code, for example, required Americans to file income taxes individually. In 1948, just before the birth of the post-war version of the American Dream, joint filing was introduced to allow married couples to combine their incomes for tax purposes.
While couples who earn roughly the same income see little to no benefit in joint filing, couples where one partner earns all or most of the income benefit from a “marriage bonus,” which sees the higher-income class after the marriage may decline. Married couples also enjoy more tax breaks than single parents, such as a larger standard deduction.
Insider calculated the taxes for an American who earned $50,000 for the 2021 tax year using the Tax Policy Center’s Marriage Calculator. Without individual deductions, they would owe $4,314. If they marry a partner who does not work and earn no income, they would only owe $2,629 in total taxes since $50,000 falls into a lower tax bracket if they are married.
Health, Social Security, and retirement accounts all follow suit. For some married couples, it may be cheaper to include a spouse in employer-sponsored health insurance than to purchase separate policies. Spouses can also receive up to 50% of their other half’s Social Security benefit, depending on income. The IRA and Roth IRA income limits are also higher for single-income married couples.
Not to mention the challenges already facing women on these fronts, who have less money saved for retirement and spend about $15,000 more on health care in retirement than men, according to a 2019 Fidelity analysis.
One advantage: women tend to live longer than men. Actually, it’s also a financial disadvantage, Whitney Pesek, director of child care policy at the National Women’s Law Center, previously told Insider.
“While women end up with less retirement income than men, they also typically need more retirement savings because women tend to live longer than men,” she said. “Women are more likely to be single later in life and have higher healthcare costs than men as they age.”
Until America’s singletons get a stronger support system, single women will continue to face an uphill struggle when it comes to affording the things they want.
“It’s been a long time, and if I’m honest I’m still thinking about what I could do with double income,” said Rowsey, the single mom and homeowner. “At some point, however, I realized that I was wasting time with an idea that I had no guarantee of.”
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