There has been a lot of research released lately flagging an alarming trend: Marriage is in trouble in the middle and lower class. Marriage is doing well in the educated middle/upper classes. Class is strongly related to education.
I think this article sums it up best: The class divide: Marriage as a ‘luxury good'
"In recent years, people with a college degree have become more likely to get—and stay—married than their less educated counterparts, and those who stay married also tend to be much wealthier than unmarried adults.
"Some people have talked about marriage as a luxury good," said Susan Brown, a sociology professor at Bowling Green State University and co-director of the National Center for Family and Marriage Research."
The college degree seems to be the important factor:
When Marriage Disappears: The Retreat from Marriage in Middle America: The State of Our Unions 2010
"Among the affluent, marriage is stable and may even be getting stronger. Among the poor, marriage continues to be fragile and weak. But the most consequential marriage trend of our time concerns the broad center of our society, where marriage, that iconic middle-class institution, is foundering.
We could call them the lower-middle class or the upper-working class, but the better term is the moderately educated middle. They do not have BAs, MBAs, or PhDs. But they are not high-school dropouts either. They might have even achieved some college or training beyond high school. They are not upscale, but they are not poor. They don't occupy any of the margins, yet they are often overlooked, even though they make up the largest share of the American middle class.
In many respects, these high-school graduates are quite similar to their college-educated peers. They work. They pay taxes. They raise children. They take family vacations. But there is one thing that today's moderately educated men and women, unlike today's college graduates or yesterday's high-school graduates, are increasingly less likely to do: get and stay happily married."
This article, College Graduates Marry Other College Graduates Most of the Time - Philip Cohen - The Atlantic
reviewed the American Community Survey taken in 2011. The Survey reviewed all people under age 50 who got married (male-females only) for the first time in 2011. Of this population, 71 percent of college graduates married another college graduate.
In addition, the likelihood to marry was more strongly correlated with women's education than men's: 65% of women college graduates married a partner who had a higher degree than BA, compared with 78 percent of male college grads. In other words, more men than women were marrying a spouse with a higher degree.
New research just released found the same thing: people getting married, women often have the higher degree/education.
Record share of wives are more educated than their husbands | Pew Research Center
From the article:
"It used to be more common for a husband to have more education than his wife in America. But now, for the first time since Pew Research has tracked this trend over the past 50 years, the share of couples in which the wife is the one "marrying down" educationally is higher than those in which the husband has more education.
In 2012, 27% of newlywed women married a spouse whose education level was lower than theirs. By contrast, only 15% of newlywed men married a spouse with less education.
Among college educated newlyweds (including those with postgraduate and advanced degrees), nearly four-in-ten women (39%) married a spouse without a college degree, but only 26% of men did so."
[Just to add this in from the other thread about men and marriage and the wage gap, from the same Pew release: "Does marrying someone with less education mean "marrying down" economically? Not necessarily. When we look at the newlywed women who married someone with less education, we find that a majority of these women actually "married up." In 2012, only 39% of newlywed women who married a spouse with less education out-earned their husband, and a majority of them (58%) made less than their husband." BTW my first thought on this is that women coming out of college with a BA or greater have spent a lot of time in school, while their mate has been working and moving up the income ladder. But I haven't looked at the data to see if that is actually what happened.]
This is a lot of data, following trends over long period of time, coming from different sources, that support the same finding. That is strong evidence that they are catching a true change and not a one-off anomaly.
So what does all of this mean pragmatically? If you are a college-educated man or woman and want to get married, your chances are clearly good.
But, what about everyone else? Even for those who want to go to college, it is incredibly expensive.
There is a substantial population who aren't going to want to go to college, who wouldn't be a good fit.
Are we seeing a reflection that men do not want to get legally tied down to someone they will have to financially support? Especially when they are unreliably able to support themselves?
(BTW this is why I found the Dr Helen Smith speech to be just preposterous. To ignore the loss of jobs and education for men and only to focus on their not getting married- it's like complaining that the roof is collapsing without looking at the walls that are crumbling. You can't fix the roof until it has walls to support it!)
Are we seeing that women aren't willing to commit unless they can support themselves- or looked at another way, women aren't willing to legally tie themselves to someone they will have to financially support?
Where do we go from here?
I think this article sums it up best: The class divide: Marriage as a ‘luxury good'
"In recent years, people with a college degree have become more likely to get—and stay—married than their less educated counterparts, and those who stay married also tend to be much wealthier than unmarried adults.
"Some people have talked about marriage as a luxury good," said Susan Brown, a sociology professor at Bowling Green State University and co-director of the National Center for Family and Marriage Research."
The college degree seems to be the important factor:
When Marriage Disappears: The Retreat from Marriage in Middle America: The State of Our Unions 2010
"Among the affluent, marriage is stable and may even be getting stronger. Among the poor, marriage continues to be fragile and weak. But the most consequential marriage trend of our time concerns the broad center of our society, where marriage, that iconic middle-class institution, is foundering.
We could call them the lower-middle class or the upper-working class, but the better term is the moderately educated middle. They do not have BAs, MBAs, or PhDs. But they are not high-school dropouts either. They might have even achieved some college or training beyond high school. They are not upscale, but they are not poor. They don't occupy any of the margins, yet they are often overlooked, even though they make up the largest share of the American middle class.
In many respects, these high-school graduates are quite similar to their college-educated peers. They work. They pay taxes. They raise children. They take family vacations. But there is one thing that today's moderately educated men and women, unlike today's college graduates or yesterday's high-school graduates, are increasingly less likely to do: get and stay happily married."
This article, College Graduates Marry Other College Graduates Most of the Time - Philip Cohen - The Atlantic
reviewed the American Community Survey taken in 2011. The Survey reviewed all people under age 50 who got married (male-females only) for the first time in 2011. Of this population, 71 percent of college graduates married another college graduate.
In addition, the likelihood to marry was more strongly correlated with women's education than men's: 65% of women college graduates married a partner who had a higher degree than BA, compared with 78 percent of male college grads. In other words, more men than women were marrying a spouse with a higher degree.
New research just released found the same thing: people getting married, women often have the higher degree/education.
Record share of wives are more educated than their husbands | Pew Research Center
From the article:
"It used to be more common for a husband to have more education than his wife in America. But now, for the first time since Pew Research has tracked this trend over the past 50 years, the share of couples in which the wife is the one "marrying down" educationally is higher than those in which the husband has more education.
In 2012, 27% of newlywed women married a spouse whose education level was lower than theirs. By contrast, only 15% of newlywed men married a spouse with less education.
Among college educated newlyweds (including those with postgraduate and advanced degrees), nearly four-in-ten women (39%) married a spouse without a college degree, but only 26% of men did so."
[Just to add this in from the other thread about men and marriage and the wage gap, from the same Pew release: "Does marrying someone with less education mean "marrying down" economically? Not necessarily. When we look at the newlywed women who married someone with less education, we find that a majority of these women actually "married up." In 2012, only 39% of newlywed women who married a spouse with less education out-earned their husband, and a majority of them (58%) made less than their husband." BTW my first thought on this is that women coming out of college with a BA or greater have spent a lot of time in school, while their mate has been working and moving up the income ladder. But I haven't looked at the data to see if that is actually what happened.]
This is a lot of data, following trends over long period of time, coming from different sources, that support the same finding. That is strong evidence that they are catching a true change and not a one-off anomaly.
So what does all of this mean pragmatically? If you are a college-educated man or woman and want to get married, your chances are clearly good.
But, what about everyone else? Even for those who want to go to college, it is incredibly expensive.
There is a substantial population who aren't going to want to go to college, who wouldn't be a good fit.
Are we seeing a reflection that men do not want to get legally tied down to someone they will have to financially support? Especially when they are unreliably able to support themselves?
(BTW this is why I found the Dr Helen Smith speech to be just preposterous. To ignore the loss of jobs and education for men and only to focus on their not getting married- it's like complaining that the roof is collapsing without looking at the walls that are crumbling. You can't fix the roof until it has walls to support it!)
Are we seeing that women aren't willing to commit unless they can support themselves- or looked at another way, women aren't willing to legally tie themselves to someone they will have to financially support?
Where do we go from here?
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