By Martin Parsons
One of the greatest long term social challenges facing the next Conservative government will be gently to encourage people towards changes in culture and thinking that are more beneficial and less harmful to society as a whole. Encouraging marriage is a particular case in point.
Melanchthon is absolutely right that the cost of wedding services puts some people off getting married.
The cost of weddings is actually a problem in many countries and a lot has to with social expectations and obligations. You are expected to have a certain standard of event and some people, often including distant relatives you haven’t seen for years, expect to be invited. Well, if you think weddings are expensive in white British society – spare a thought for our friends from Asian cultures – many of them are expected to invite literally hundreds of people to wedding receptions and the weddings often go on for three days or more, something that is financially crippling for many families.
When I lived in Pakistan, some of my Pakistani friends told me that many years earlier the Pakistani government had for a number of years actually banned wedding receptions – all you could have was a cup of tea and piece of cake after the wedding. Sounds draconian, but according to my Pakistani friends it was incredibly popular – because it set people free from a whole series of social obligations which often led to many poor people particularly being in crippling debt.
No one would suggest that we follow exactly the same policy in England, but perhaps we can encourage people towards marriage both by means of economic nudges and by measures that lower the cost of weddings.
Two possibilities for a future Conservative government would be:
- A marriage grant – say £500 per couple, not to pay for, but just to nudge people towards, the idea that getting married is a good thing.
- Being able to offset the cost of a wedding reception against income tax – provided that the total cost of the reception before tax did not exceed say, £2,000. That would have a similar effect to approach previously tried in Pakistan. i.e. it would reduce the cost of weddings by effectively pruning down some of the social obligations, such as having to invite large numbers, that raise the cost of weddings to amounts that are simply unaffordable for many people.
The first would cost approximately £57 million. The second would cost approximately £100 million (based on a marriage rate of approximately 230,000 per year). But given that:
- Only 6% of married couples split up by the time their first child is 5 years old, compared to 52% of cohabiting couples splitting by the time their first child is five years;
- And children whose mum and dad split up are 75% more likely to give up on school and leave school with few or no qualifications, are approximately twice as likely to experience adverse outcomes on a whole range of measures including behaviour problems and engaging in crime, mental health problems, become sexually active at an earlier age, turning to drugs, smoking and heavy drinking….
Given the cost that just some of these impose on society, spending £157 million a year nudging people towards marriage – could well be an investment that will actually reduce public spending in the medium term.
