Married men earn more over their lifetime than either single men divorced men according to a new study.

Using Census data on wage and income, Drs Pat Fagan and Henry Potrykus, of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute, looked at earnings for divorced men, married men and single men.  

According to their findings those men who stayed married made more money than those who had ever been divorced and those never married.  

Men who had been divorced saw their income grow by roughly one pc per annum compared with two pc for married men.

Due to high levels of divorce in the US, this means a growing number of men are not maximizing their income potential which is having a knock-on effect in the economy at large.

“You’re dealing with long-term difference in a society being affluent or falling off of that,” Dr Potrykus said.

He added that marriage was a key factor in economic growth. When a marriage ends with divorce, the economic growth diminishes.

In the US, 20.5pc of men have been divorced at least once, according to 2009 data from the Census Bureau, a figure that has stayed reasonably constant for the past decade.