Marriage market shifts linked to gender education gap, study finds
The Story
A new working paper finds that growing educational and economic gender gaps in the United States are reshaping marriage patterns. The study suggests that college-educated women are maintaining marriage rates by increasingly marrying higher-earning men without college degrees, while women without college degrees face a shrinking pool of economically stable partners. The decline in marriage is concentrated among Americans who did not attend college.
Key Facts
- Women now make up almost 60 percent of undergraduate students and outnumber men on college campuses by more than two million, according to one government estimate cited in the article.
- The study by economists Clara Chambers, Benjamin Goldman, and Joseph Winkelmann examines marriage rates for Americans born between 1930 and 1980.
- For college-educated women born in 1930, 77.7 percent were married at age 45; for the 1980 cohort, 71.0 percent.
- For non-college-educated women born in 1930, 78.7 percent were married at age 45; for the 1980 cohort, 52.4 percent.
- College-educated women are increasingly marrying men without four-year degrees, and on average they partner with the higher-earning men in that group.
- Women without college degrees are still having children at relatively high rates, but their marriage rate has plummeted, and many are raising children alone.
Conflicting Reports
No conflicting reports identified in the source article.
Still Unclear
What specific policies could address the economic struggles of men without college degrees and potentially affect marriage rates? The article notes that the study is a working paper, and co-author Clara Chambers suggests that policies helping men excel in school, avoid prison, and find stable work might have downstream effects on marriage rates, but no specific policies are detailed.
Misconceptions
No widespread misconceptions addressed in the source article.
Key Figures
- Clara Chambers – research fellow at Yale University, co-author of the study (will begin PhD in economics at Harvard)
- Benjamin Goldman – co-author of the study
- Joseph Winkelmann – co-author of the study
- Jack Antonoff – musician and producer, mentioned anecdotally in the article
Sources: NPR
