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Briefing Marriage in America The frayed knot May 24th 2007 | MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA From The Economist print edition As the divorce rate plummets at the top of American society and rises at the bottom, the widening "marriage gap" is breeding inequality SKC THE students at West Virginia University don't want you to think they take life too seriously. It is the third-best "party school" in America, according to the Princeton Review's annual ranking of such things, and comes a creditable fifth in the "lots of beer" category. Those who wake up garmentless after a hook-up endure the "walk of shame", trudging back to their own dormitories in an obviously borrowed football shirt, stirring up gossip with every step. And yet, for all their protestations of wildness, the students are a serious-minded bunch. "I don't see how it's a bad thing," says Ashley, an 18-year-old studying criminology. She wants to finish her degree, go to the FBI academy in Virginia and then start a career as a "profiler" helping to catch dangerous criminals. She wants to get married when she is about 24, and have children perhaps at 26. She thinks having children out of wedlock is not wrong, but unwise.
A few blocks away, in a soup kitchen attached to a church, another 18-year-old balances a baby on her knee. The father and she were "never really together", merely "friends with benefits, I guess". There is a widening gulf between how the best- and least-educated Americans approach marriage and child-rearing. Among the elite (excluding film stars), the nuclear family is holding up quite well. Only 4% of the children of mothers with college degrees are born out of wedlock. And the divorce rate among college-educated women has plummeted. Of those who first tied the knot between 1975 and 1979, 29% were divorced within ten years. At the bottom of the education scale, the picture is reversed. Among high-school dropouts, the divorce rate rose from 38% for those who first married in 1975-79 to 46% for those who first married in 1990-94. Among those with a high school diploma but no college, it rose from 35% to 38%. Many mothers avoid divorce by never marrying in the first place. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among women who drop out of high school is 15%. Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank, says it does. In her book "Marriage and Caste in America", she argues that the "marriage gap" is the chief source of the country's notorious and widening inequality. Middle-class kids growing up with two biological parents are "socialised for success". They do better in school, get better jobs and go on to create intact families of their own. Children of single parents or broken families do worse in school, get worse jobs and go on to have children out of wedlock. This makes it more likely that those born near the top or the bottom will stay where they started. America, argues Ms Hymowitz, is turning into "a nation of separate and unequal families". A large majority--92%--of children whose families make more than $75,000 a year live with two parents (including step-parents). At the bottom of the income scale--families earning less than $15,000--only 20% of children live with two parents. One might imagine that this gap arises simply because two breadwinners earn more than one. A single mother would have to be unusually talented and diligent to make as much as $75,000 while also raising children on her own. And it is impossible in America for two full-time, year-round workers to earn less than $15,000 between them, unless they are (illegally) paid less than the minimum wage. Marriage itself is "a wealth-generating institution", according to Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe, who run the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. Those who marry "till death do us part" end up, on average, four times richer than those who never marry. This is partly because marriage provides economies of scale--two can live more cheaply than one--and because the kind of people who make more money--those who work hard, plan for the future and have good interpersonal skills--are more likely to marry and stay married. But it is also because marriage affects the way people behave. American men, once married, tend to take their responsibilities seriously. Avner Ahituv of the University of Haifa and Robert Lerman of the Urban Institute found that "entering marriage raises hours worked quickly and substantially." Married men drink less, take fewer drugs and work harder, earning between 10% and 40% more than single men with similar schooling and job histories. And marriage encourages both spouses to save and invest more for the future. Each partner provides the other with a form of insurance against falling sick or losing a job. Ms Dafoe Whitehead and Mr Popenoe put it like this: "Working as a couple, individuals can develop those skills in which they excel, leaving others to their partner." As Adam Smith observed two centuries ago, when you specialise, you get better at what you do, and you produce more. Perhaps the most convincing work showing that marriage is more than just a piece of paper was done by Mr Lerman of the Urban Institute. In "Married and Unmarried Parenthood and Economic Wellbeing", he addressed the "selection effect"--the question of whether married-couple families do better because of the kind of people who marry, or because of something about marriage itself. Using data from a big annual survey, he looked at all the women who had become pregnant outside marriage. He estimated the likelihood that they would marry, using dozens of variables known to predict this, such as race, income and family background. He then found out whether they did in fact marry, and what followed. Mothers who married ended up much better off than mothers with the same disadvantages who did not. Among those in the bottom quartile of "propensity to marry", those who married before the baby was six months old were only half as likely to be raising their children in poverty five years later as those who did not (33% to 60%). Changes in family structure thus have a large impact on the economy. One of the most-cited measures of prosperity, household income, is misleading over time because household sizes have changed. By 2006, that number had dwindled to 26 This partly reflects two happy facts: more young singles can afford to flee the nest and their parents are living longer after they go. But it also reflects the dismal trend towards family break-up. Children of the sexual revolution Since the 1960s, the easy availability of reliable contraception has helped to spur a revolution in sexual mores. As opportunities for women opened up in the workplace, giving them an incentive to delay child-bearing, a little pill let them do just that without sacrificing sex. At the same time, better job opportunities for women changed the balance of power within marriage. Wives became less economically dependent on their husbands, so they found it easier to walk out of unhappy or abusive relationships. As the sexual revolution gathered steam, the idea that a nuclear family was the only acceptable environment in which to raise a child crumbled. The social stigma around single motherhood, which was intense before the 1960s, has faded. College-educated women typically see single motherhood as a distant second-best to marriage. If they have babies out of wedlock, it is usually because they have not yet got round to marrying the man they are living with. Or because, finding themselves single and nearly 40, they decide they cannot wait for Mr Right and so seek a sperm donor. By contrast, many of America's least-educated women live in neighbourhoods where single motherhood is the norm. And when they have babies outside marriage, they are typically younger than their middle-class counterparts, in less stable relationships and less prepared for what will follow. Consider the home life of Lisa Ballard, a 26-year-old single mother in Morgantown. She strains every nerve to give her children the best upbringing she can, while also looking for a job. Her four-year-old son Alex loves the Dr Seuss book "Green Egg...
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