Marriage and children: any advantages?

I read a report a couple of weeks ago from the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS)  on whether children within marriage do better educationally. This is a hugely contentious issue and broadly divides along right wing/ left wing lines although it's clearly more complicated than that. In America this is a particularly polarizing argument with the Tea Party at one of the debate and the more liberal wing of the Democrats at the other. I haven't looked for the writing of this post, but I'd bet any money that the Daily Mail will have plenty of past articles proposing marriage as the cure for antisocial behaviour, any number of educational failings and probably the state of the English football team too.  

Anyway. I liked this debate on the Today programme as it was about not only the issue of marriage but also what you do with the data to arrive at your conclusions. This is hugely important as any of you that have studied research methods will know all too well. I'm not sure how long the live link to the radio show will work so I'd better include a link to the report which the IFS wrote too.

I know the topic is controversial (as so many social science topics tend to be) but that at least makes for lively conversations. If you've the time for a 'lively conversation' you know where I am.