Lindsay Mitchell: Is there a relationship between marriage rates and welfare dependence?

With new data available from the 2023 census, it is possible to answer questions that contemporary policy makers seem disinterested in.

Earlier I posed the question, Who relies most heavily on welfare?

The following graph replicates ethnic benefit data and adds marriage data. Is there a relationship between marriage rates and welfare dependence? It would appear so.

Mike Butler: Same-sex marriage two years on

The demand for same-sex marriages by New Zealand residents has decreased by over 10 percent over the past year while traditional marriage has slightly increased in the same time period, according to statistics released this week.

Civil Unions and Marriages: September 2015 quarter shows that there were 19,659 traditional marriages, up from 19,266, while there were 450 same-sex marriages, down from 504. (1)

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Polygamy’s prospects in Western society

One of the ‘slippery slope’ arguments often put forward by people opposed to same-sex marriage is that it will open the floodgates to other unorthodox marriage practices. “First, same-sex marriage; next, polygamy” is a dire warning we have all come across (probably many times). 

But what is the connection between the two? Frankly, there isn’t one.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Same-sex marriage – a looming quandary

When Marriage Acts are amended to bring same-sex couples within their ambit, those couples become subject to the existing restrictions imposed by blood and family ties (consanguinity and affinity) which forbid people from marrying someone too ‘close’ to them. So if a woman can’t marry her brother, uncle or nephew, she can’t marry her sister, aunt or niece either. Simple, right? As far as it goes, yes. But not once we consider the rationale behind consanguinity restrictions and what the application of the ‘marriage equality’ paradigm to them is likely to lead to.

Admittedly, the effect of consanguinity on marriage custom is not quite as straightforward as I have implied above.

Lindsay Mitchell: 4 in 5 Maori children born outside marriage

Four in five Maori children are now born outside of marriage. The earliest statistics kept on Maori ex-nuptial births were in 1968. The percentage of Maori children born outside marriage would have been even lower pre-1968.

Does marriage matter?