A recent survey found that marriage rates in the United States had dropped precipitously. Only 51% of Americans were married, and marriage rates are dropping similarly in other developed nations. Given how most of the benefits of marriage are conferred by the government, come from being in a happy relationship, or aren’t even real, the government should sanction cohabitations and marriages.

The government has, intentionally or not, created a litany of benefits that only affect the married. Consider gay couples, whose marriages are not recognized by the federal government. They pay on average, an extra $6,000 per year in taxes because they have to file separately. Married couples who file as a married couple qualify for these tax loopholes and save thousands, demonstrating one of the governmental advantages of marriage.

There is also, with some policy makers, an even greater desire to provide more incentives to traditionally married couples. Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell advocated in his Master’s thesis that the government should focus its resources into the family, specifically married couples with kids. This included government policy favoring the married over “co-habitators,” tax policies favoring married couples, advocating of covenant marriages (a type of marriage difficult to enter and near impossible to exit) and other penalties for divorce.

There was also the Healthy Marriages Initiative, passed in 2006, aimed at encouraging and improving marriages. This bill moved $150 million per year to the states to invest in local education on the benefits and workings of marriage, public ads on the benefits of marriage, relationship skills classes to reduce divorce, and a reduction of marriage penalties in aid programs. This shows that government has shown an interest in preserving, promoting, and even subsidizing marriage.

All of this effort to promote marriage, yet is it justifiable? The very fact that the government is trying to subsidize something suggests it is not. Subsidization of goods and services usually only occurs when the government deems that people should be engaging in an activity but aren’t. As the most basic costs of marriage, the paperwork and certificates, are affordable; subsidization isn’t needed to help the poor. So why is the government subsidizing something people don’t want?

There are arguments that marriage contains a litany of health benefits. Some studies have suggested that married people are less likely to have heart attacks, get cancer, require surgery, slip into dementia, and other health benefits. The problem is that it isn’t as simple as that. These are not benefits of the actual act of marriage, but rather of happy cohabitation and socio-economics. The relationship itself is what’s actually important, as the stress of a bad marriage, according to a Feb. 2010 New York Times article, is as damaging to one’s health as smoking. Being married or cohabitating together is just as happy, as long as both relationships are equally healthy.

Furthermore, married people, on average, tend to be wealthier and sometimes healthier than the unmarried. It isn’t that marriage is making people healthier, but that those who are less likely to be unhealthy are also more likely to get married, resulting in a correlation, but not causation. The government benefits of marriage don’t hurt either.

As mentioned, the government throws millions into marriage, from tax breaks to shared health insurance, hospital visitation rights and more. This however doesn’t prove that marriage is a healthy institution, but that the government benefits really can improve people’s lives. If the government gave the same benefits per capita to any other group, from puppeteers to cat lovers, given enough time, these groups would eventually become healthier than the public as a whole.

Yet none of these are actually benefits of marriage itself, but rather byproducts of government benefits. The actual benefits of marriage itself, it would seem, are slight, if any. If all of these incentives and benefits are needed to justify marriage, it begs the question of why bother?

One reason is for the stability of the family. But if that’s the case then these and other policies still don’t make much sense. It was only with the affordable care act that the government improved access to condoms and the pill for the poor and lower middle-class. In fact, up until that law was passed, many insurance companies wouldn’t cover the pill, while it did cover Viagra.

One way to establish stable families is to prevent them from beginning on the wrong foot. Contraceptives, when used properly, allow people to avoid having children until they’re at the right stage in their lives, with a sizable savings and career to allow for time and money necessary to raise children. Yet, these policies are rarely, if ever, advocated to help families; instead it is policies like the healthy marriage initiative which just incentivize marriage and relationships.

There is of course the benefit in keeping both parents together, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they must be married. If two people remained together, while receiving the same benefits as married couples, there would likely be little if any difference, because as shown, few of marriage’s benefits are from the actual institutions. Despite this, most of these policies and initiatives are focused on married couples.

If the government and family activists are truly concerned with the well being of families, they should focus less on the actual institution and more on family planning and keeping people together. Being married is far less valuable than staying together and the benefits conferred through governmental institutions. If anything, they should focus on keeping people together, rather than getting people married and hoping marriage will keep them together, as the 50% divorce rate suggests it won’t.