They missed the obvious: Married men are more productive because they have a woman at home doing the "women's work." This both raises their quality of life AND

They missed the obvious: Married men are more productive because they have a woman at home doing the "women's work." This both raises their quality of life AND frees up both time and energy to put into their job instead of into self-maintenance. I have seen this from both sides of the equation: I was a full time wife and mom for a lot of years. Then, I got divorced. I told my sons I would rather they take over the "women's work" so I could put more into my job than for them to get some kind of part time, minimum wage job. This is basically a form of transferring her energy to him and the employer paying for getting the extra energy and mental focus he can now bring to the table. This works reasonably well (societally speaking) in a traditional society where women are primarily homemakers and moms. It works less well in a world where people are getting married later, we are actively discouraging people from having more kids because there are already more than 7 billion people on the planet, etc. We need to find another answer, one that allows for young, single people, childless couples, etc to all have full lives. Otherwise, it is just the married men who get The Good Life and everyone else is shorted.