Why Should I Get Married: Implications of Class and Gender Differences on Health Outcomes for Cohabitating and Married Black Couples

Health problems that disproportionately affect blacks could be regarded as a result of African American\u27s tendency towards non-normative family patterns. Cohabitation has become a popular non-normative family formation within the United States as well as with blacks. This has led many to study the role of cohabitation on health. Scholars have compiled a long list of negative consequences of such practices, while generating another list of positive outcomes of marriage, but these studies of cohabitation might be capturing the consequences of resources and income disparities rather than cohabitation in itself. Existing studies of cohabitation, as well as marriage, neglect the role of class in differential outcomes as well as an intersectional approach. My results indicate that class improves health more than marriage and the benefits of marriage are not identical across gender with black married men reporting negative health outcomes compared to black married women