This book documents and explains the remarkable decline in the
American marriage rate that began about 1970. This decline has
occurred in spite of the fact that married people are better off
than unmarried people in many ways. Many other attempts to explain
the "retreat from marriage" blame it on culture change involving a
devaluation of marriage, and/or on ignorance of the benefits of
marriage among the unmarried population. In turn, because unmarried
adults and single-parent families are poorer than others, poverty
and its associated problems are attributed to the failure to marry.
The argument presented here is that the declining marriage rate is
due to the deteriorating position of workers, particularly men, in
the American economy. Not only have jobs disappeared and wages
decreased, especially for the less-educated, but existing jobs have
become more precarious. Less-educated workers can't count on having
jobs in the future, and can't count on earning enough to support
families if they have jobs because their wages have stagnated. In
this economic environment, the flexibility to change partners
becomes a survival strategy for the economically marginalized
population, which has been increasing in size for the past four
decades. Arrangements such as cohabitation allow for this
flexibility; marriage does not. This argument implies that marriage
is not a realistic choice for many Americans. In fact, it is a
choice that many people don't actually have. Marriages between
economically marginal men and women would not eventuate in the
benefits that middle-class people experience when they marry, and
would eliminate an option they may need to survive in the face of
unrelenting poverty. We won't convince these people that marriage
would improve their lives, because in most cases it wouldn't be
true. To return the marriage rate to its pre-1970 level, we need to
address the economic factors that have caused the decline.
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