# Presentation: 232253

## Marriage and Caste in America

- Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-marital Age

## Everyone knows:

- 50% of marriages now end in divorce (actually, the number is probably closer to 40%).
- A third of children in the United States are born to unmarried mothers. (According to the CDC the number is now 37%, growing slowly but steadily.)
- There has been a threefold increase in the number of children growing up with a single mother in the past 40 years

## What people don’t know:

- These trends are separate and unequal
- College educated and higher income women are far less likely to divorce and to have children outside of marriage than less educated and low income women.

## Slide 4

## Slide 5

## The Marriage Gap

- In 2000 10% of mothers with college education were living without husbands.
- 36% of mothers without a college degree were living without husbands
- “The rise in single parent families is concentrated among blacks and the less educated.  It hardly occurred at all among women with a college degree.” Ellwood and Jencks, “The Uneven Spread of Single-Parent Families.”

## The Marriage Gap and Children

- Social science consensus: controlling for race, income, mother’s education, children growing up with a single parent are at greater risk of a host of problems including drug and alcohol use, early sexual activity, school failure, delinquency, and teen pregnancy.
- Less likely to go to college, and more likely to become single parents themselves.

## The Marriage Gap and Children 

- Thirty six percent of single parent families are living in poverty, vs. 6% of married couple families.
- Ninety two percent of children in families making over 75 thousand are living with two parents.
- Twenty percent of children in families making under 15 thousand are living with two parents.

## Slide 9

## Why does marriage matter for kids?

- One theory: Strength in numbers: two incomes, two sets of hands, two brains for problem-solving.
- What about children living with cohabiting parents?
- Children living with stepparents?

## Marriage not just two people, but a social program

- Not just relationship between two adults
- A social institution that carries with it specific cultural ideals and beliefs about how to live life.

## The Middle Class Life Script

- Childhood, adolescence including training for work whether high school education or medical school, self-sufficiency, marriage, and only then children.
- The script must be *learned*.  It is not natural.
- Only 8% of those who follow the script (graduating high school at least) are poor. Seventy nine % of those who do not are poor.

## Other (American) marriage messages

- That it is preferable for children to grow up with their own mothers and fathers
- That parents try to save money and buy property (especially a home) for the sake of the family
- That parents should devote themselves to “The Mission” – the child’s social, emotional, and cognitive development

## Marriage and property

- Marriage in the West always tied up with private property
- Net wealth of married couple grows 16% a year on average; after 15 years, 93% higher than singles and divorced. (Jay Zagorsky, Journal of Sociology, 2005.)
- Married men earn between 10 and 40% more than single men with similar schooling and job histories. (Robert Lerman, Urban Institute)

## Unmarriage and poverty

- A number of studies showing increase in single parent homes explains much of the rise in child poverty rates
- Thomas and Sawhill (Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2002) say restoring marriage to 1960 levels would cut child poverty by one third.  Black family poverty rate would have been 28.4, not 45.6%.
- Hoynes, Page, and Stevens (NBER, Paper 11681) says changes in family structure explain 37% of increase, significantly more than the effect of stagnating median wages

## Why is there a Marriage Gap?

- Popular explanation: more stress and fewer opportunities among lower income population = more fragile relationships.
- Not enough marriageable men.
- Problem - less economic stress among disadvantaged married couples than unmarried.

## My explanation for Marriage Gap

- Unmarriage revolution – new assumption that marriage and childbearing are not connected.
- Disadvantaged women (though not black women) marry at similar rates to higher income women over their life time– but often after they have had children and not to their child’s – or children’s - father. (David Fein, MDRC, 2004)
- Vast majority of disadvantaged mothers are romantically involved with their baby’s father at birth; 46% are living together
- Most see marriage as marker of middle class achievement, not means of getting there. Few mention children – Fragile Families.
- Loss of the middle class life script which offers the best chance for moving up the social and economic ladder.
- A cultural problem.