Mates' rates: politicians will continue applying sloppy logic to research statistics if the more numerate among us don't challenge them, writes Ruth Prickett, who casts a critical eye over a recent policy announcement on marriage benefits.

AuthorPrickett, Ruth

The UK Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, proposed in July that married couples should receive a weekly tax credit of 20 [pounds sterling]. Cameron stated that more couples stayed together until their child was five years old if they were married. This, he said, proved that "marriage works". Such a leap of logic indicates either a lack of understanding of how to use statistics or a politician who is being disingenuous.

The policy triggered a debate on whether such a payment would influence any couple to enter wedlock, but there is also a wider issue about the extent to which public money should be spent to promote desired social behaviour--and whether it works. The costs of antisocial behaviour are well documented, but throwing money at promoting marriage seems to me as futile as the money that past governments have spent on combating the "promotion of" homosexuality and other human tendencies that they have deemed "undesirable". You might agree that society would be improved if everybody was happily married with two well-adjusted and socially motivated children, but would paying such happy couples 20 [pounds sterling] a week achieve this?

The Social Justice Policy Group research that Cameron quoted found a substantial difference between the average lengths of married and non-married relationships "even after discounting socioeconomic factors such as age, income, education and race". But a more comprehensive way to achieve comparable figures on marriage versus cohabitation would surely involve accounting for socioeconomic factors, not discounting them? Maybe, instead of offering tax breaks for married couples, the government should encourage people to defer breeding until they are older and more settled, or give more financial support to all couples in particular socioeconomic groups. Research by the Office for National Statistics shows that, although the number of divorces in England and Wales fell by seven per cent in 2004, it was the first annual decrease since 1999. Also, the average age at divorce has risen over the past decade from late thirties to early forties, which suggests that many couples with children aged over five are divorcing.

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There are further confusions. The Social Justice Policy Group report states: "The ongoing rise in family breakdown affecting young children has been driven by the dissolution of cohabiting partnerships. The majority of these are less stable than marriage. European data...

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