The Racial Gap in Marriage: How the Institution Is Tied to Inequality

http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/10/the-racial-gap-in-marriage-how-the-institution-is-tied-to-inequality/247324/

In her engagingly written Atlantic cover story, Kate Bolick examines the rise of single women as a result of the decline of men. From her own experience she glimpses in men's unfortunate economic struggles a hopeful opportunity for women: to reassess the primacy of marriage, in their own lives and as a cultural ideal, and to embrace their freedom to thrive as single women, without any need or desire for a husband.

However onerous the restrictions of marriage, its primary social effect now is to exacerbate the already wide socioeconomic disparities that understandably trouble so many Americans.

During the past few decades, marriage has become more associated with socioeconomic status than perhaps at any other time in American history. Marriage has declined substantially among poor people of all races, who are both less likely to marry and more likely to divorce than their counterparts from earlier eras. Meanwhile, the affluent and highly educated are more likely to marry (even if a bit later in life than in earlier eras) and less likely to divorce than their less advantaged counterparts. While college-educated parents tend to delay childbearing until after marriage, less educated women often have children without the benefit of marriage. Indeed, University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus has found that among white women who have their first child in their early 20s -- which college educated white women tend not to do -- fully 60 percent of those mothers are unmarried when their child is born.

The irony here is that those who are best positioned economically to live without a partner or to have a child without being married are the least likely to choose to do so. Among men, the more a man earns, the more likely he is to be married. Among women, what used to be known as the marriage penalty -- a reference to the fact that greater education was associated with lower marriage rates -- has steadily eroded. Now, college-educated women are more likely than their less educated peers to marry and stay married. Economically secure, college-educated men and women may not need marriage, but most of them want it.